2015-02-10E IDIAN CITY COUNCIL WORKSHOP
4 MEETING AGENDA
AMENDED AGENDA
City Council Chambers
33 East Broadway Avenue
Meridian, Idaho
Tuesday, February 10, 2015 at 3:00 PM
1. Roll -Call Attendance
X David Zaremba O Joe Borton
X_ Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird
X Genesis Milam X Luke Cavener
X Mayor Tammy de Weerd
2. Pledge of Allegiance
3. Adoption of the Agenda Adopted
4. Consent Agenda Approved (Pg 2)
A. Cost Share Application Agreement with Ada County Highway District for
Pine Avenue, Meridian Road to Locust Grove Road
B. Award of RFP and Approval of Agreement to TruePoint Solutions LLC for
the "UTILITY BILLING SOFTWARE SOLUTION AND IMPLEMENTATION"
project for a Not -To -Exceed amount of $259,000.00.
C. Approval of License and Maintenance Agreement to TruePoint Solutions
LLC for the "TruePoint Utility Billing System" for a Not -To -Exceed amount
of $180,000.00.
D. McLinder Subdivision No 2 Water and Sewer Easement
5. Department Reports
A. Legal Department: Annual Update (Pg Pg 3-14)
B. Continued from January 13, 2015: Public Works: FY2014 Engineering
Project Close -Out Report (Pg 14-26)
Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda — Tuesday, February 10, 2015 Page 1 of 2
All materials presented at public meetings shall become property of the City of Meridian.
Anyone desiring accommodation for disabilities related to documents and/or hearing,
please contact the City Clerk's Office at 888-4433 at least 48 hours prior to the public meeting.
6. Community Items/Presentations
A. Solid Waste Advisory Commission 2014 Annual Report (Pg 26-30)
B. Arts Commission 2014 Annual Report (Pg 30-34)
C. Meridian Transit Planning Presentation by Valley Regional Transit (Pg 34-
54)
7. Items Moved From Consent Agenda None (Pg 54)
8. Continued Department Reports
A. Police Department: Update on Public Safety Training Center Construction
and Police Department Remodel (Pg 54-58)
B. City Council Liaison/Committee Updates (Pg 58-60)
9. Future Meeting Topics None (60-61)
10. Executive Session Per Idaho State Code 67-2345 (1)(f)(a): (f) To Consider and
Advise Its Legal Representatives in Pending Litigation; (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
Amended onto the agenda: Executive Session Per Idaho State Code 67-2345
(1)(c): (c) To Conduct Deliberations Concerning Labor Negotiations or to Acquire
an Interest in Real Property, Which is Not Owned by a Public Agency (Pg 61-62)
Into Executive Session at 6:22 p.m.
Out of Executive Session at 7:23 p.m.
Adjourned at 7:23 p.m.
(Note: Mayor left meeting at 5:40 p.m.)
Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda — Tuesday, February 10, 2015 Page 2 of 2
All materials presented at public meetings shall become property of the City of Meridian.
Anyone desiring accommodation for disabilities related to documents and/or hearing,
please contact the City Clerk's Office at 888-4433 at least 48 hours prior to the public meeting.
Meridian City Council Workshop February 10, 2015
A meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 3:00 p.m., Tuesday,
February 10, 2015, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd.
Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, Charlie Rountree, Keith Bird, David
Zaremba, Genesis Milam and Luke Cavener.
Members Absent: Joe Borton.
Others Present: Bill Nary, Jaycee Holman, Caleb Hood, Warren Stewart, Jamie Leslie,
Mark Niemeyer, Kyle Radek, Mike Barton, and Dean Willis.
Item 1: Roll -call Attendance:
Roll call.
X David Zaremba Joe Borton
X Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird
X Genesis Milam _X_ Lucas Cavener
X Mayor Tammy de Weerd
De Weerd: I would like to welcome everyone to our City Council Workshop. For the
record it is Tuesday, February 10th. It's 3:00 o'clock. We will start with roll call
attendance, Madam Clerk.
Item 2: Pledge of Allegiance
De Weerd: Thank you. Item No. 2 is the Pledge of Allegiance. If you will all rise and
join us in the pledge to our flag.
(Pledge of Allegiance recited.)
Item 3: Adoption of the Agenda
De Weerd: Item No. 3 is adoption of the agenda.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: In Item No. 4-A, the third word agreement needs to be struck and the word
application substituted and in item number ten, an additional paragraph needs to be
added to the Executive Session, a paren C, to conduct deliberative -- deliberations
concerning labor negotiations, et cetera. With those two amendments, I move that we
approve the agenda.
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February 10, 2015
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Bird: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the agenda as amended. All
those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Item 4: Consent Agenda
A. Cost Share Agreement with Ada County Highway District for
Pine Avenue, Meridian Road to Locust Grove Road
B. Award of RFP and Approval of Agreement to TruePoint
Solutions LLC for the "UTILITY BILLING SOFTWARE
SOLUTION AND IMPLEMENTATION' project for a Not -To -
Exceed amount of $259,000.00.
C. Approval of License and Maintenance Agreement to TruePoint
Solutions LLC for the "TruePoint Utility Billing System" for a
Not -To -Exceed amount of $180,000.00.
D. McLinder Subdivision No 2 Water and Sewer Easement
De Weerd: Item 4 is our Consent Agenda.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: I move that we approve the Consent Agenda as amended, authorize the
Clerk to attest and the Mayor to sign.
Bird: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the Consent Agenda. If there is
not discussion, Madam Clerk.
Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Borton, absent; Milam, yea;
Cavener, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Item 5: Department Reports
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A. Legal Department: Annual Update
De Weerd: Item 5 is our Department Reports. 5-A is two annual update from our legal
team.
Nary: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. It's my privilege every year
to come and report to you how we are doing, now the city is doing as well and it's a
privilege to work here, especially with my team. Some of whom are here today, some
are still upstairs making sure everything else is taken care of before they come down
here to see this presentation. What I want to talk about a little this year -- a little
different than some of the years. We have been here for ten years now. We have had
an in-house legal service now for the City of Meridian for a decade and I want to talk a
little bit about where we have come and what we have been able to accomplish in that
time period and kind of where we are going over the next few years. So, our first thing
is to look back at where we were. Ten years ago City of Meridian had a contract of
legal service with the law firm White Peterson out of Nampa and those services that the
city received at that particular -- Bill Nichols was the last city attorney we had under that
contract. I can't say enough good things about Bill Nichols. He's probably one of the
best city attorneys around and he certainly is one of those people that's a great
influence around the state in the municipal attorney world and this is the level of service
that the city was receiving at the time from White Peterson. They would attend all our
City Council meetings. They would attend all of our P&Z meetings, though most of the
attorneys that staffed that were newer attorneys in their law firm and I know the Mayor
was on P&Z during that time period. Council Member Zaremba. Myself. Sometimes
that was great and sometimes it wasn't so great. It certainly depended on the attorney
on the level of service that you might get at the P&Z Commission from -- from the
service. They met with the Mayor as needed. They would draft ordinances as required
and, then, they were in charge of making sure all the legal compliances was done in
regard to noticing public meetings, ordinances, and the like and also managed litigation.
Some they would do and some they would do within their contract and some that was
outside of their contract and the city would pay an additional fee for that. This is the
level that many cities around our state receive. This is very typical of contracted legal
services around the state. There is small cities and cities of significant size that that's
the type service that they are comfortable with and that's what they get. So, they are
getting a level of service that's very consistent with the other cities. But the Mayor
wanted legal to be part of the team and we had this discussion back in 2004 and the
desire was is that the city was growing, as we were evolving as a city, both population,
business and in the planning and zoning area and all the various growth areas that we
were seeing back in the early 2000s and by 2004 and the Mayor felt it was important
that legal be a part of that team, because the -- when you have a contracted service it's
a little different. There is always going to be some separation or accountability,
because they don't work for you specifically, they work for themselves or they work for a
firm and they are -- you know, they don't really have the same embeddedness, they
don't have the same accountability that you might see from an employee because of the
nature of the contracted business and in the municipal attorney world in the state that's
pretty common. Most municipal attorneys that are contracted will tell you the same
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thing, that they have to maintain some separation, both from the IRS's perspective, as
well as from a business perspective, and one of the concerns we had back in 2004 is
that the City of Meridian wasn't even the number one client of that law firm, that they
had the City of Nampa at the time and they were a much larger client than we were.
So, the Mayor wanted legal to be part of the team and this is kind of how that came
about in 2004 and we started this staff with myself and we hired Michelle Albertson, who
is still with us, as our paralegal. We hired Ted Baird, who is also still with us. We, then,
added an assistant attorney position and that became a deputy position in 2008. That
was Emily Kane and, then, we added Andrea Pogue as our assistant attorney when
Emily moved to the deputy position, so --
De Weerd: And I would also note that it cost less.
Nary: Yeah.
De Weerd: So, just wanted to point that out.
Nary: What's that?
De Weerd: That it cost less than the contract.
Nary: Oh, yes. I mean having -- having the -- having an in-house system is a much
more efficient system and we will get into that a little bit about why that is and you will
see that in a second. So, here is kind of what we had for a little bit. This is a picture
from years ago. Some of you may remember we were here in the old bank and the
chicken wasn't -- that was me, that wasn't really the chicken bucket I don't think was the
legal department. When I got here the LP was the big issue that we seemed to have.
Those of you that weren't here, LP is -- was Louisiana Pacific that had -- had a
production center here on Franklin that was making wood product for flooring and they
had a new system they put in place with a big smoke stack that made a lot of noise over
by the middle school and the people that lived over there and so when I got here in
October and probably for the first six months we had a number of meetings with
neighbors in trying to deal with the noise, because the city had been part of their
expansion project or had at least helped promote that and so it was a very hot button
issue at the time and we got -- we moved into the bank for a period of time before we
moved into the City Hall. So, things have definitely changed some over the last ten
years from what we had back then. So, now we are at ten years later and we should
talk about some of the different things that the legal department provides and -- both
individually and throughout the city, throughout the various departments. We have a
weekly prep meeting. We didn't do that before we got here. We didn't meet with each
department and collectively as a staff meet and discuss what are you folks going to talk
about on Tuesday night. How do we make sure that whatever you're going to do or
have to address -- that all of it is in front of you and prepared for you, so that we don't
have to delay it and so that we don't have to wait and come back another week and get
more information, we make sure that all of that is done and so we have a lot of meetings
in front and after your meetings to make sure that all those things are either done ahead
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of it or taken care of on the back end. We review every item on the Council agenda.
That may seem terribly routine to most folks. It's not. I mean it really is a time-
consuming process, but it's necessary, because, again, the worst thing that we could do
and the worst thing that I think we could tell our public is if you're going to have to wait
another week while we look at it one more time and -- because we haven't been as
prepared as we could be. It's our objective always in legal that you have what's in front
of you what you need to make a decision on. You have all the information, all the
reports, all the data, whatever it is you need to be able to make a decision and we will
have vetted all of that prior and we review every single item on that agenda to make
sure it's done, it's complete, it's ready to go forward. We staff all the meetings for the
City Council, as well as all the commissions. We didn't do that ten years ago. We didn't
staff the arts commission, we didn't -- well, we didn't have the arts commission. We
didn't staff the parks commission. We didn't staff all them. We only staffed P&Z and the
Council. But we feel it's important that there be legal compliance at every commission
and every committee that's necessary, but statutorily, as well as under our code and so
we do have an attorney present at all of those meetings. The minimum we have is
seven a month and that's just the commissions and standing committees. Again, we
have internal meetings and the internal committees as well. We have task forces that
they get commissioned for certain projects, we have project teams on certain items that
come. You remember a few years ago we had an issue with the precious metals. We
had some citizens that had concerns on our ordinance change regards to precious
metals and how the city was going to require that they be reported to -- through a
system through the police department if someone came in and sold their grandma's
jewelry or somebody else's grandma's jewelry, that we know where it came from and
that way we could trace it back. We had some citizen concerns with that. The Mayor
and Council directed we have a citizens' committee to vet through that. We had staff
that participated in that to make sure we, again, were legally compliant with what's
necessary, as well as whatever was going to come out of that we could meet those
needs and directions from the Mayor and Council. City Council and commission
training. We provide that both for the Council, as some of you went through last year,
but we all -- or I guess a year and a half ago. And also we have commission training as
each of our commissioners come on board as we change commissioners on all our
various commissions, we will have training with our staff, both legal staff, as well as
department staff, help them get up to speed so they know what we are talking about,
how the meetings operate, what legal compliance they need to meet, what requirements
they would need in regards to whether it's executive session, whether it's meeting the
quorum, whether talking to the press or talking to somebody outside of a meeting, that
they understand what all the rules are. So, we do spend a lot of time providing that
level of training. We, again, being an internal department, we have the luxury and the
ability and the time dedicated to work with each of the departments, the Clerk's Office,
the Mayor, the Council President on the executive sessions. You know, again, it's the
same thing all of you are aware when we get to executive session we have an agenda,
we have a set amount of things we need to talk about, we try to keep it on task to not
waste your time or take up your time needlessly, we want to make sure that we are
efficient with both your time, as well as the departments. Again, being internal we have
the time to be able to do that and be prepared for that in a better way. We prepare
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agreements with our partners, like MDC or other business partners. We have had
different things like the arts -- the history walk project. We had a relationship with MDC
to help pay for that. We helped craft those agreements and such for those things. We
get daily questions from citizens and the media. You can imagine between our office,
the clerk's office, the Mayor's office, we get a lot of inquiries from the public about
varieties of things. Many things we have some knowledge of so we can provide the
feedback and customer service and think that's incredibly important. It doesn't matter
what the questions are, we want to make sure we can answer them correctly and we
want to make sure we can do it timely. That's probably the most critical things that we
can do for our public to make sure we are responsive in a timely manner. Even
sometimes when the answer is no. So, the other thing -- again, additionally, on top of
that, is being an internal department we are able to help monitor compliance with laws
and statutory regulations. As you know you hear it all the time and we have different
levels of requirements at every department in the city and we help the departments with
that. We help them try to make sure we are compliant, if we need to update our code to
meet those. That's one of the bullets here. Update our city ordinances, update our
iCodes, whatever is needed to make sure that, again, we are being legally compliant.
The state or the feds may put some requirements upon us, we want to make sure we
are meeting those as required. Again, as an internal department we meet with the staff
in various departments all the time. The nice thing about being in one location at City
Hall, like we have been since 2008, is it's much easier to go downstairs than have to
drive across town. So, it really is nice for our departments and we meet with them in
our offices as much as we meet with them in theirs, to make sure, again, if there is
questions and such, we want to help make them smoother, easier, simpler, faster or try
to get that resolved. We have tried to be very solution oriented to make sure that,
again, whatever the needs of the city are we are getting them met. As I stated, updating
our ordinances, iCodes and things, some of them are routine, some of them are not.
We want to make sure that we are timely in all of those things. Many of them, again,
are mandatory, so I want to make sure they are getting done in a timely manner.
Managing our litigation, appeals, mediation, we have a variety of different things that the
city gets involved in and usually it funnels through our office, because of the legal
compliance requirements. Again, we help manage all of those and whether it's
scheduling, whether it's participating, whether it's providing documentation or data, we
are usually the ones that will appoint people to do that. City wide department training as
well. We have different things -- the greatest example that I can think of is public
records. Public records area we will talk about a little bit more later -- has grown
exponentially over the last few years in the state and part of that that we think is critical
is the training of our own staff. For people to recognize what is a public record and how
things can be done and we have really tried very hard to make sure that we are doing
things both in a customer service way, because many things don't require a lot of red
tape and you're not going to hear every lawyer tell you that, but most things don't -- not
everything requires a lot of profit. Some things we can just answer somebody and we
try to find a way to make sure we can do that when it's appropriate, but other things we
can't and when we can't we want to make sure we are legally compliant, because,
again, the law makes us be that way and the courts are pretty -- pretty sticky about us
not following those things. So, we, again, provide the training to the departments so
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they understand the gravity of what they are doing and how significant it can be and,
again, I think sometimes you will see the process actually get easier by the training that
we can provide. Adjust ordinances to changing legal and community landscape. I think
this is one of the things that makes the City of Meridian unique amongst other cities in
this state. We have been very proactive and -- of issues that are out there that other
entities that maybe could address it don't choose to address it right now. Covered
loads, a number of years ago, was an issue statewide. We as a city decided to take
that on ourself as a city initially, because the state wasn't ready to do that at that
particular point in time and we did. Texting and driving was another issue that the state
and the legislature wasn't very quick in responding to and we felt it was important
enough as a city to make that an ordinance in Meridian before it was a statewide
ordinance. Massage therapists. They changed the way it was going to be handled in
the state and we tried to be in front of that and amending our ordinances to meet those
early on. Private security. We recognized the problem with how our present security
ordinances were set up and we changed them. We were able to bring them forward
and you folks supported that. E -cigarettes was another one where the state neglected
to include E -cigarettes in their clean air -- Clean Indoor Air Act and so we were able to
add that on prior to the state. Smoking in parks was another. We were one of the few
cities early on to take on that responsibility and not allowing smoking in the park before
that became a statewide issue, we decided as a city to do that and doing that -- again,
being in house and being -- being on staff it's a lot easier for us to react and respond to
that very quickly, which sometimes is a little difficult. Those are alittle different when
you have a contracted service do that. I don't know if all of you realize since 2004 we
have added nine new commissions and committees to the city. Some of that is a lot of
its initial work in just setting up the ordinances -- enabling ordinances for them, the
bylaws for them, the -- the structure of those committees and how they can function and
we help implement almost all of these since we have come on board. In my office every
one of the folks, besides -- besides our flexibility I believe as a staff -- I mean one of the
things that we try very hard to do is make sure we don't get ourselves too pigeon holed
into every -- this person does one thing. In a larger office you can do that and an office
of our size I really can't afford to have one person that only does one function. We do
have to be very, very flexible and have the ability to take on other work that somebody
else may be gone today, we can't let things sit around, we want to make sure they get
done timely. But yet individually every one of my folks -- every one on our team
provides great assistance and an asset to our team and the city as a whole. Michelle,
for example, as our paralegal, she -- when I wrote Michelle is the straw that stirs the
drink, I'm not kidding. Michelle is critical to our operation and she helps keep all of us
on task. She helps keep all of our organizational skills to its peak, making sure that we
are doing what we need to be doing and she takes care of so many different things, this
is just a snap shot of those. The one I want to talk about a little bit, revise a
development agreement. You folks probably realize, because you have seen them, but
don't realize the back end work and the time that is involved and how many amended
development agreements we have done in the last four or five years. We have had
quite a few that we did back in 2004 through 2008 or '9, and, then, those sat and we
extended those and we did the -- in doing the thing and, then, you may have noticed
over the last couple of years we have had a lot of developers come back and those
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developments they want to revise them or they want to separate pieces of them into
different parts and that requires a lot of time and effort to do that, to create those
different agreements and Michelle has taken on that task very well and is usually, a lot
of times, our primary contact with some of those developers in making sure that they get
us the information we need, so we can turn that agreement around, separate out the
ordinances that are needed to be able to make that happen and get it done in a timely
fashion and so that's something I think we have done better than a lot of other cities. A
lot of them sit around and wait for the developer to do it. We try to be proactive and get
it done as quickly has possible. I can't say enough about Ted Baird and the work that
Ted's done for our office. This is probably one of the most -- that you have seen, the
visible of. You know, we buy a lot of ground for a variety of different purposes and Ted
is involved with all of that and that's a significant amount of time and effort to do that
and --
De Weerd: So, do you call him Teddy Bear?
Nary: Well, I know that Councilman Bird does, so I thought maybe --
De Weerd: Just thought I would ask. Am I calling you wrong, Ted?
Nary: But some of these things I listed on here, you know, again, you may not have
realized that ten years ago we didn't have an impact fee ordinance and so, again, there
is some -- there is legal compliance that's necessary to get there. The state code
directs us how to do that. We didn't have that in place yet, so we have added that since
we have been here. But, again, all of the ground that's on here are things that we
purchased since 2004. Again, a lot of time and effort has gone into that. The Land and
Water Conservation Fund land exchange, we have talked about a couple of times. You
know how complicated it's been and it was a very involved, engaged process in
swapping that land and getting all those parties together and making that a real win for
everybody and I think we were successful in making that a win for the city, making that
a win for Moore, making that it a win for the dairy board -- I mean all of the parties
involved with that I think came out with something better than what we started as
separate entities and I think Ted and others -- I mean Jay was certainly a critical part of
that as well with the parks department, but those are things that, again, having staff
imbedded as part of your process I think really is what makes those things work a lot
easier than having to have somebody that works elsewhere to try to coordinate that.
Emily is in charge of regulating fund. But, actually, Emily is in charge of no fun
sometimes. And we all give Emily a bad time, but Emily has had the unenviable task
sometimes of crafting ordinances that don't allow us to do things that people would just
like to do and usually it's things that we don't as a city really want them to do either, so it
isn't something that we are trying to take their fun away, we want to make sure it's safe
for everybody or that the city is protected. That's one of the things that we felt was
really important as we develop some of these things in the city. The temporary use
standards and the special events team is an example of that where we have a collective
team of different entities within the city, police, fire, public works, the city clerk's office,
legal, community development -- whoever is necessary to make sure that the functions,
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whether it's in the park or it's outside of a park, that it's done safely and it's done in a
away that the city isn't having a liability to any of the events that are going on, because
it's occurring either on our property or within our city and coordinating all of those things
together requires a lot of time and effort, both on the ordinance drafting, which we have
done, as well as the coordinating of the actual team and through the efforts of both
Emily, as well as the other departments, we work together very well to get those things
done. We handle our own appeals. To date we have had a few. We have been
successful. Wiley was one of those that's been cited a number of times in other cases
that we did win at the state supreme court and it's been cited favorably since then a
number of times as well. The Hymas case was a public records case and we have got
that on affected appeal and we anticipate, hopefully, having a positive outcome of that
as well. I highlighted on this particular slide public records. As you will note, there was
276 in 2013 and 239 in 2014. Those are just the ones that occur essentially within City
Hall. So, those we work with the department, the city clerk's office and legal and we
review every one of those to make sure that they are legally compliance before they get
out the door. That doesn't include the number that goes to the police department, which
they -- they don't separate out the ones that are reviewed by lawyers, they get a number
of requests for varieties of things. They had over 3,000 public records requests at the
police department in the last year. Some of them are very routine, that are insurance
companies requesting accident reports, those are very routine. Those can get handled
in one fashion, but many of them, again, require review. Our contracted service with the
city of Boise provides that level of review today. The number we don't really have, but
we know the number is just going to go up as we evolve as a city, as our department
grows, as the law becomes more complex in this area and as we add body cameras to
our police officers we are going to get more and more requests of this type. Again,
some of the other things -- again, there is a number of agreements and contracts and
different things, whether it's the art projects like the -- the public art piece down there on
the triangular cross-over piece, whether it's the wrap that's on the utility box that's up
there by the Harvest Church, all of those things require agreements, either with the
highway district or the artist or a combination of both, all of those things get funneled
through our office and get taken care of, so that, again, those things can become
routine. Andrea is our -- is our assistant attorney, because Andrea currently works on a
part-time schedule and this is just a snapshot of what Andrea has to compress into her
week to make sure these get done and we try to make sure Andrea's things aren't --
don't have the same time criticalness because of -- because of her part-time schedule,
but yet all of these things are things that are critical and needed for the city to get done.
Bankruptcy case management. As you know, probably -- and we have mentioned a few
times during the recession, we had a lot more bankruptcies in the city than we have
ever dealt with before. We didn't have a great process for how to deal with those and
we do now. So, we were able to address those with the bankruptcy court, address the
different things that the bankruptcy court might require. Some of it's paperwork. Some
of it's documentation of such. We could provide all of things. Ordinance updates,
again, whether it's something simple -- well, what seems simple at the set, like street
addressing, when we dealt with that issue, that's something that can get a little more
engaging than we realize and that's something that, again, Andrea has been working on
with the departments and, again, because we are here we have the time and the ability
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to do that. Solid waste and recycling is a big area of Andrea's concern and she has
been able to address that with the SWAC commission, as well as Republic Services,
but, again, along with those different things, programs, contracts that are necessary for
them, the different things in regards to our Republic Services agreement that needs to
get managed, they would have to come through the legal department. Andrea helps
take care of those. Oh. And the other one I forgot to highlight, but also record
retention. On the flip side coin of providing public records to people is retaining the
records that you have and that's a fairly -- it's a fairly time consuming job and you have
to do it almost constantly, because what will happen -- and this is common for us, as
well as others, is you will make an initial review through your records of what you have
and you will make an estimation based on logic and reason and recordkeeping system
as to how to maintain things and how long to maintain things and what you really want
to avoid is keeping everything forever, because you just will run out of places to put it
and there is no way to maintain that, so you have to do that, but what will happen is as
you evolve you will find you retain some records for too long, you have retained some
records for too little. So, again, it's this constant reevaluation of what do we have, why
do we need this, how long can we keep it, what medium do we need to keep it in.
That's a -- that's probably the biggest challenge that we will see in the future is what
medium to keep it in. What seems like a medium that exists today and will likely exist
tomorrow may not. So, trying to make sure we have the right records or documents for
the future are critical and helping decide what to retain is just part of that. So, this slide
is -- some of the things, even just that -- that fall onto my page as well and that mostly is
making sure some of these higher profile things can get facilitated properly with all of
you, whether it's the Meridian Heights project that we worked on with Public Works, the
Victory south annexation that was part of that with Community Development. Union
negotiations. One of the things that I think we have been very proud of in our
department and I think as a city that we -- we as a city are very proud of is our
relationship with our union. We have one union with the fire department, we have a
very good relationship with them. When I talk to other cities I'm very proud of our role
with them. I think we are able to meet and talk about issues and discuss them very
logically, very fairly, very professionally and reach resolution most of the time on those
that are satisfactory to both sides. I think for many of you, because you have been here
a long time, that might seem like the way it should be and always is. It might be here, it
isn't necessarily everywhere else and not just in cities, but in other professions around
the state, it isn't always quite that easy and I think the time and effort that's been taken
over time to do that I think is something that is going to benefit the city always in the
long run. The master agreement with Nampa -Meridian Irrigation District was a -- a long
time coming. There was a lot of effort on Public Works' part and the Legal Department
to make that happen, some very positive feedback from the board at the time and since
we have had that in place I think things have been better than they have been in the
past. And, again, the legislative issues are things that I think as a city we are always
going to be at the forefront of at least paying attention to or being a part of in a solution
oriented way. Amongst all of those things we still have the time I think as a department
to be out there promoting the city and being an example for other cities around the state
as a premier city, both -- you know, we promote ourselves as a premier place to live,
work, and raise a family and we want people to understand that we really mean that,
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that we as a city are a very professional organization, we can be the leaders and many
of our department directors or people in our various departments are the leaders without
the state and I think our staff is as well. We are part of the city attorney technical
analysis team for AIC. We are on the -- we are part of the Municipal Attorneys
Association. I was a past president. Emily is the current president. The Idaho State
Bar government and public sector lawyer section, we are all involved with that. Emily is
the current president of that organization as well. All of our attorneys are sought out by
both municipal attorneys, as well as other organizations to teach CLEs around the state
at municipal attorney meetings, at AIC, on various subjects, because of the expertise
that we bring to the table. I think that really does the City of Meridian really well. I think
it really does show that the -- the state and other cities that we are a leader in not just in
-- a great place to live, but a great place to work and the people here are really leaders
in their field. One of the things over the years that's been kind of hard to articulate, the
differences between in-house attorneys, outside attorneys, and the Attorney General's
office has really helped in this -- in this regard is that they have to annually explain to
the legislature the same thing. If you read the paper today they are still wrestling at the
state level on how much money they have spent on outside attorneys, when they have
an entire office of attorneys at the Attorney General's Office and Attorney General
Wasden says he -- you know, it is frustrating to him, it does cost the state a lot of money
and this is the exact same method that they use. They, basically, look at the
marketplace and tell the legislature when you hire an attorney from the outside to do
something for you, you're going to pay somewhere between 150 to 250 dollars an hour.
That's if you can get them to give you a government rate. This is not the normal rate.
Many attorneys charge between four and five hundred dollars on hour out there in the
private sector, but those that work directly within the government can -- you know,
regularly will give the government a raise, because they recognize that we have a
limited budget for certain things. But those folks are hired to do one thing. They are
hired to do one case, one project. They are working on one item for you. We, as a
staff, handle hundreds of things for you every day. That rate is the entire -- rate of my
entire department of five combined of an hourly rate and that's to do everything that you
-- that we have just talked about, plus more. We also support all the focus areas. You
know, as we have discussed the strategic plan and as we move forward in the different
focus areas of the city, again, the legal department is a support department, provides
support in every department of the city to meet those needs and meets those strategic
objectives of the city and, again, another method we are going to hopefully be able to
bring to you in a year is some better time tracking. We have resisted the time tracking
system, because, again, most of the system that exists out there in the public are
geared towards money and we don't bill anybody by the hour, but we have an internal
system that was created by our IT folks that just tracks time. So, we have been starting
to do that, so that we can give you a better idea of how much time certain types of
projects take or certain types of activities will take, but that -- but that rate of attorney at
45, that covers everything that we just talked about, as well as more. In fact, our list
looks like that and that's just some of the different types of agreements that we have
done in the last couple of years and the numbers as you see go up significantly each
year and I would anticipate they are going to continue to go up as we move forward.
Risk management is the other part of our department. Michelle Albertson is certified in
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risk management from Idaho Prima. My certification will be done this spring at the next
session, so we have a very engaged and very professional work group to manage our
risk claims that we get. We collaborate with ICCRMP on every claim and this is another
area that I'm very proud of that we as a city have really expanded our relationship with
ICCRMP. ICCRMP is our insurer for the public that's watching that. They are the Idaho
Cities Counties Risk Management Program and we are -- we are a partner with our
insurer and we work very closely with them on every claim. Every claim that we provide
them they contact us, we discuss every one of them, a lot or a little, depending on the
claim. We are -- we are in the driver's seat and the decision maker on whether that
claim is paid or not and we have the ability to get ICCRMP to help us in managing it,
whether it's investigating it, getting more data, figuring out what's the right thing to do.
They work very closely with us, but we are very, very engaged with them, which is not
the common practice for a lot of cities or a lot of entities. Many times once they pass it
off to the insurer, the insurers sort of just deal with it on their own and the entity doesn't
have much to do with it at that point. We don't -- we don't think that's the right thing to
do. We don't think that's right for our citizens. We don't think that's right for our claims.
ICCRMP is great in working with us and making sure that we have a voice in what we
are doing. So, we had -- just to give you a little snapshot of the filings we have had, we
had 40 claims against the city last year. We only had 14 -- or excuse me. In '13. We
only had 14 last year. So, we have gone down in some of those. We had more claims
paid in '13 than in '14. Some of those were related to the construction project of
Meridian Road. Some of them are related to some of that stuff, which is they were a
little bit higher. But, again, most of it -- what I think is what's important and for what you
to know is when we have an issue and we have a concern, I can call ICCRMP and they
will immediately be responsive to what our needs are, whether it's providing counsel for
us, whether it's providing assistance, whether it's providing an on-site person to come
and manage the claim, whether it's something to do with damages, damages to the
building. We had -- a few years ago we had some flooding in the building. ICCRMP
was right here to make sure that whatever needed to be managed about that. We had
backups of the sewer system where you have a problem with a sewer claim, there,
again, they are right on site with us to help make sure that it's being handled properly.
That's something I think is really invaluable to the city and helps keep our costs down.
So, where do we think we are going to go over the next ten years? You know, I -- I
anticipate this coming year in asking you as part of the budget to move our part-time
attorney up to a full time and I didn't -- I didn't accidentally put balloons on here. What I
wanted to demonstrate is the way the work flows in our office it is almost like a balloon
and the work will get larger and larger to some degree and we will absorb it and we can
continue to -- we will continue to absorb it no matter what we do, but at some point the
balloon just can't get any bigger and the reality is we will get to a point that the workload
is much more efficiently done with -- with the attorney position being full time, rather
than part time, because, again, you can -- you can expand the workload and move it
around to different folks and make it a lot easier on everybody to get it done in a timely
fashion and a more efficient way as well. The police attorney is another one that we
have discussed for a number of years with the police department and at the Mayor and
director's level and a lot of it is going to be based on the workload as well. I mean,
again, as the police department grows the workload has become more and more
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complex. That's a body worn camera that was in that picture. That I know will expand
the workload of the police department, as well as the necessary legal work behind that
in using those body worn cameras that's going to be an issue that we are going to have
to address. We have been able to address it through a contract for a number of years.
I don't know how much longer that's going to be the most practical or viable way to
handle that work and I would anticipate, if not this year, that by next year the workload
will reach that tipping point, that it will make more sense to have the person working for
the City of Meridian, rather than for a contracted entity. The prosecution -- I get asked
that periodically of when we would have our own prosecutors, no longer contract with
the city of Boise for that service and that's another one that's really a hard one to
estimate. Part of it is the discussion of what -- what facilities are, where they are, what
is the level of service that's necessary to be provided for them, so that's why it's a
question mark here. I don't know if that's going to change. If nothing changes from the
way the current system is, you know, we may be able to continue for a number of years
with a contracted service, but I don't know that that's -- I certainly don't think that's a
definite and I don't think that's a system that will be sustainable for ten or 15 years. It's
been a great -- a great contract for us for the last ten plus years. I don't know how much
longer that's going to be a practical solution for us. I put FY -21 as a new full time
attorney. That's about five years out. That's -- again, it's an estimate based on
workload and how the work ebbs and flows, where we are as a city by FY -21 is -- 2020
1 think the anticipated population of the city by 2020 is over 100,000. So, would we
need an additional attorney at that point, something tells me we might. So, that's why I
put that on there. I was trying to think of some kind of theme to leave you with, you
know, and -- you know the legal department and everyone kind of thinks lawyers are a
bunch of stuffy people or we are really hung up on rules and red tape and processes
and things like that and we are not and we are a pretty lighthearted bunch in our -- in
our group and, you know, this is one thing we thought of as a theme, but Emily is
allergic to chocolate, so we can't use that as a theme for the legal department. This is
from our team building outing we had this year. We went to Cleo's Nature Trail out
there in Marsing. I don't know if you guys have ever been there. So, this is from that
outing as a group that we had. So, I was trying, again, to think of some kind of theme
and 2015 this is going to be pretty popular, but I think it's a little nerdy. I'm not sure that
everybody would want that to be the legal department's theme or mantra out there for
the rest of the public, so we probably won't use that. This is another picture. If you
have never been to Cleo's Nature Trail it's worth -- it's worth the weekend drive out to
there. So, probably saying this is probably the best for everybody as a theme of our
department and, you know, when you think of us, remember, that -- oh, that's not me.
Wait a minute. There is me. You know, this was out there at Cleo's Nature Trail, too,
and this really -- you know, I think even -- even though it's kind of funny -- I mean it
really embodies what we try to do as a department. We do work together very well as a
team. We work very well with other departments as a team. We really feel integral to
helping the operations of the city flow and make it easy and like one of the slides that I
heard from a very wise person, just because we make it look easy doesn't mean that it
isn't hard and we do a lot to make it look easy for all of -- for everybody else and I'm
very proud of that. The only thing I could think of in ten years -- do you have any
questions?
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De Weerd: I'm glad you said lawyer on instead of lawyer up. Mr. Bird.
Bird: I like the chocolates better.
De Weerd: Any questions from Council?
Bird: I don't have any. Thanks, Bill.
Nary: Yeah. This is -- I was going to leave. Our ten year -- our ten year hope, if that's
okay. So, we thought really in ten years we will be doing this and we are probably doing
that. All right. Thank you.
Bird: Thank you, Bill.
B. Continued from January 13, 2015: Public Works: FY2014
Engineering Project Close -Out Report
De Weerd: Thank you, Bill. Okay. Item 5-13 is under our Public Works Department,
so --
Stewart: Good afternoon, Madam Mayor, Members of the City Council I appreciate the
opportunity to come stand before you today and I also want to thank you for giving us
the opportunity to postpone this to this workshop, so that we could have the staff here to
present their particular projects and I was sitting there talking to Kyle before we got up
to do the presentation, I didn't know John and Tom and all the rest of the group was
going to come and I told him -- I says this reminds me of a quote from Braveheart.
There is a point in the movie where you see the Irishmen and they are getting ready for
a battle and he looks at the other guy and he says: The Almighty says this is going to
be a fashionable fight and he said it's strong to find this crowd and I looked back and I
was like -- I told Kyle I said this crowd I didn't expect. So, anyway, moving on. As you
well know the purchasing policy of the City of Meridian requires us to come in and do a
project closeout presentation to you every year regarding the capital projects that we
got done in the previous year. So, we are going to be talking today about 2014. Many
members of the engineering staff are going to take their turn and come up and report to
you regarding the projects that they completed in 2014 and I'm going to take a little bit of
time to answer a couple of questions that have come up in past presentations, as well
as address some of the things that have sort of lingered on in other presentations that
we have made in years past. Before I turn the time over to the staff and let Kyle
announce the staff, I want to address a question that has come up -- or that did come
up in the 2016 through 2020 capital enhancement plan. I think, Councilman Bird, you
posed a question to us. You had asked how many of the projects that we had
envisioned in the first ever capital improvement plan, which was the 2011 through 2015
capital improvement plan, how many of those CIP projects have been completed and I
didn't know this number off the top of my head, so we went back and crunched some
numbers and I wanted to just take a few moments to report back to you the answer to
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that question. So, in 2011 to 2014 there were a total of 64 projects that were identified.
Of the 64 projects that were originally identified in that time frame, two of them were
deleted, because they were associated with the Bittercreek project. Ten projects were
also added to the CIP during that same time frame. Five of those projects had to --
were on the water side of the business and had to do with radionuclides over the MCL
and addressing some well concerns, iron and manganese treatment and proactively
acquiring land for future water supply projects. Three projects were on the wastewater
side of the business and addressed safety concerns at the treatment plant, nitrogen
removal enhancements and the expansion of the irrigated land at the wastewater
treatment plant to the property in the back to help with our reclaimed water program.
Two of them were also added on the reclaimed water side of the business and were
associated with accommodating ACHD schedules. During that same time period there
were ten projects that were postponed from the CIP and one of those -- an example of
one of those would have been the project to put irrigation in Lake View Golf Course. Of
course, we postponed that until the NPDES permit comes out and we can determine
whether that's the most cost effective thing to do. There were also some other projects
that were moved and were postponed and those had primarily to do with trying to
balance expenditures year over year, minimize impacts to rates and also effectively
utilize staff resources. And although these projects are important, they were not
necessarily critical in the very year that they were originally planned and they have just
been moved to other years. So, the summary of that. This equates to a total of 72
projects that were added to the original -- or 72 total, including the projects that were
added during this same period. Of that 72 projects, 57 of those projects or 79 percent
of those projects have been completed to date. Ten percent -- or ten projects or 14
percent have been postponed to future years and five projects or seven percent of
those are in process and will be completed in fiscal year 2015. If you take into account
the 14 percent of those projects that were intentionally and strategically removed or
moved from the original five year CIP, 93 percent of the projects that we envisioned
back in 2011 have been completed. The balance of those projects are in process and
will be completed this fiscal year. The five year capital and enhancement plan has been
a useful tool for us in planning our work and in looking to the future and trying to make
sure that we plan it appropriately and I hope this helps to answer some of the questions
that -- that came up during that original capital and enhancement plan and if you --
unless you have questions regarding that, which that would be fine, I'm going to turn the
time over to Kyle, who will introduce the staff and actually the balance of the
presentation.
De Weerd: thank you, Warren. Any questions?
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Just one quick question. Out of the 57 projects that were completed what
percentage of that was of the original 64 that you anticipated having? Is that -- does
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that account for one hundred percent of that? Is it -- is part of that 57 some of the ten
that have been added? Do you have any idea as to what percentage that was?
Stewart: Yeah. So, the total is 72 projects.. So, it was 64 original. So, the 72 projects
that we are talking about does include those that were added. We actually did that
calculation two different ways. We actually did it adding the new projects. We actually
did it, you know, leaving those out, because they weren't in the original CIP and it came
out that there was only a percent and a half difference either way you calculated it. So,
we left them in, because it tells, we felt, the more complete story, but it wouldn't matter a
whole lot if you took those out, those ten projects out.
Cavener: Okay. Great. Thanks.
De Weerd: Any other questions? Okay
Stewart: Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you, Warren. Hi, Kyle
Radek: Hello, Madam Mayor. Madam Mayor, Council Members, I'm Kyle Radek,
assistant city engineer, and this is the list of people on our engineering team that make
the projects happen. Ten of the 12 people on this list actually managed projects. Most
of them you are going to see come up to the microphone, so I only point out the
exceptions, which are new employees that you may not even have seen. Connie Moon
is our new administrative assistant. Can you stand up so they can take a look at you?
Connie Moon is our new administrative assistant and Derik Nelson is a new staff
engineer on Clint Dolsby's team. He's only been here about two months, so he hasn't
had any projects to report on completion. Dean Stacy is a project manager on my team
and Dean has been here for a very short time as well. He hasn't had a chance to build
anything. He has, actually, wrecked a few things, so which we will cover later in the
presentation.
Bird: You got pictures, don't you?
Radek: Yes, sir, we do. Our agenda will cover large pipe projects, water and sewer line
replacements, water and sewer recycled water extensions, and wastewater plant and
sewer projects. As Warren said, this is a -- is a requirement of the purchasing policy
that we come before you and tell you about the projects that we completed in the last
fiscal year, so we are here because we are required to be here. But we are also here
because we are proud of the projects we have got done and our project managers will
cover -- cover the projects according to what categories. Before we get started just a
couple points that this presentation doesn't have accomplishments that are only part of
larger projects. For example, Wells 16-B and C were constructed this year, but we are
not going to report on that, because the end of the project will be a pumping facility.
Likewise with the ground reservoir properties we have purchased. Also want to remind
everyone that the engineering team is responsible for lot more than just the design and
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construction of capital projects, we do significant work in master planning, operation
support, systems modeling, development review in other areas. So, this presentation is
not intended to show everything that we have done this past year. So, the projects we
completed this year were Well 25 evaluation and reconstruction. Ground reservoir
number two. Well 20 and 20-B and I think 14 as well. HVAC upgrades and SCADA
system upgrades. The Well 25 evaluation and reconstruction was kind of a combination
of a couple projects. Brent Blake managed the evaluation of the well, which had been
in service since 2004. It had never been looked at and evaluated after it had been put
in service. It's one of our wells with -- oh, it's a screen case well, but -- and, then, the
other project that was going along at the same time was -- I was working on a
radionuclides problem with that well. As that well pumped more and more water the
uranium levels in the water coming from that well started to go up, so I had hydrologic
doing some investigative work of why that was or what would you do about it and Brent
was covering the well cleaning, cameraing and stuff like that, those projects came
together. As a result we screened the upper 81 feet of the -- or we sleeved the upper
81 feet of screen with a six inch liner and blocked off a certain part of the screen that
was contributing uranium. So, the result of that is that we -- we have lowered the
uranium levels in that well down well below the MCL and they seem to have stabilized,
so it was a successful project and was also a testament to the value of drilling and
maintaining test and monitoring wells, which helped troubleshoot that problem. The
contracts associated with that project were 66,000 dollars and we didn't have any
change orders on those:
Worthington: Madam Mayor, Council Members, I'm Clint Worthington, project manager
with the engineering team. This first project everyone is probably familiar with. The
project consists of the construction of the two million gallon steel water reservoir and
booster pumps building, along with site grading, landscaping and a flush line.
De Weerd: And where is that? I'm kidding.
Bird: Can't even see it.
Worthington: The purpose of the project is to provide water to the system for daily peak
demands, as well as fire flows. The reservoir is able to supply and receive water from
both pressure zones four and five, which also allows us the ability to mix water from
different sources to increase our water quality. The project took nearly a year to
construct and although it wasn't received well in the beginning, there were many
positive comments on the final product. Original contracts for the construction were 3.9
million. We had 4,000 dollars in change orders and changes, for a total just over 3.9
million. This next project was to add heating and air conditioning units to Wells 20, 13
and 20-B. The benefits to having heating and air conditioning in our well buildings is it
reduces operational costs, better equipment performance and a more controlled
environment. Protects equipment from overheating. Keeps the interior of the building
clean from dust and provides a more comfortable working environment for our
operators. The project installed a total of five HVAC units for a total cost of 38,000
dollars, which no net changes. Next is SCADA system upgrades. These projects
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February 10, 2015
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consisted of replacing old SCADA components, such as PLCs, panels, radios,
antennas, as well as adding new components to increase our capabilities of monitoring
and controlling equipment. The projects have created improved radio communications,
fiber link, operational control and provided for a faster, more reliable and efficient means
to monitor and control our water system facilities. Original contracts for these projects
were 442,000 dollars. We had 10,000 in net changes, for a total of 452,000 dollars.
This is a slide that you guys see every year. This is to give you a brief summary of the
water and sewer line replacement program. This will be our fifth year implementing the
programs for both water and sewer main replacements. These programs have
increased our efforts to stay on top of replacing aging, undersized infrastructure, and
has been mainly focused on the older downtown area. With some exceptions were
places where fire flow supplies were low. We combined water and sewer projects when
possible to reduce costs and impacts to the customers. The overall cost of the projects
in 2014 was four million, which includes the construction of six projects. This is a list of
the projects that were completed and each of the project managers are going to come
up and go through their project. Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you, Clint. Hi, John.
Boyd: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I'm John Boyd. I managed the next
three projects for you. First one being -- that one. This one is Northwest 8th Street.
This was the second phase of a three phase project and I will give a little background on
it for those of you that -- just as a refresher and those of you that haven't been here. In
early 2011 Public Works undertook a project to rehabilitate the existing 18 inch sewer
line between West 7th and West 8th Streets from West Broadway Avenue to West
Cherry Lane. Yeah. The preliminary engineering revealed the existing trunk line was
located in backyards in an easement, as well as an alley, and it provided limited access
for cleaning and maintenance. Additionally, a portion of the existing trunk line had to
access or maintenance easements. Due to these factors Murray Smith and Associates
was contracted and completed a design to relocate that trunk line within the 8th Street,
Pine Street and 7th Street rights of way. This also included several site sewer lines that
needed to pick up flows from adjacent areas to the trunk line. This project, as I
mentioned, was phase two of three, consisted of constructing the remainder of the 18
inch trunk line in Northwest 8th, Pine, and Northwest 7th Streets that was between
Carlton Avenue to West Broadway Avenue. The construction also included several side
sewers, as well as reconnection of 46 existing sewer services to the new mains. The
cost of this project was 803,000. We had net changes of minus 194,000, for a total 609.
Those changes were due to elimination of one of the side sewers by rerouting those
service lines associated with it, elimination of a water line replacement due to rerouting
the sewer line in Pine Street and the trench backfill material being adequate for reuse in
the trenches. All these changes provided a better, more economical project for the
taxpayers. Next project was a sewer line replacement Site 14. This project replaced an
existing sewer main on private property that was located between Franklin Road and
Taylor Street west of Meridian Road by open trench method. It included installation of
approximately 440 feet of eight inch sewer, with several manholes and direct service
connections. The original contract was 51,000 dollars. The net changes were minus
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February 10, 2015
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2,000 dollars, for a final contract price of 49,000. That change was due to shifting of the
sewer north a couple feet and we eliminated the need to replace an existing curb, which
was the 2,000 dollars. The next project was Northeast 3rd sewer line. Williams, King
and Ada Streets, which is water line replacement. The sewer lines in Northeast 3rd
were identified as problems due to services running in the streets, as well as several
residents being connected to the same service line. We replaced five -- or we installed
500 lineal foot of eight inch sewer main between East Williams and East Ada Streets
and, then, all the homes were reconnected. The water lines in Williams, Ada, and King
Streets from Northeast 3rd to Main Street were all very old and undersized, causing low
fire flows. We installed 700 lineal foot of new 18 -- new eight inch water main in each of
those streets and all those homes were reconnected. The original contract price was
490,000. We had net changes of 85,000 dollars -- minus 85,000 dollars, for a total of
405. Those changes on the project were due to, again, the native trench back material
being suitable for replacement, rather than requiring imported backfill and the trenches
were narrower than planned due to material stability, which required less asphalt. I will
turn this presentation over to Austin Peterson. Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you. Hi, Austin.
Peterson: Good afternoon, Madam Mayor and Members of the Council. As stated my
name is Austin Peterson and I was project manager on the Northeast 5th Street, Pine to
Carlton Avenue project. In 2010 our research found that the four inch cast iron pipe
installed in this section of Northeast 5th Street did not provide adequate fire flow, was
more than 50 years old, and in need of replacement. The project included replacing
650 feet of water main and 18 water services connected to it. The original contract was
for 77,000 dollars and there were no net changes. I will now turn the time over to Mr.
Brent Blake.
De Weerd: Nice job, Austin. Real short. Succinct. Love it.
Blake: Madam Mayor, Members of Council, I'm Brent Blake. I was the project manager
for the split corridor phase two project, which was right along Meridian Road and Main.
You guys don't have any tomatoes or anything to throw at me, but -- at any rate, the
project was -- was quite an extensive water and sewer main replacement project,
probably one of the bigger ones that the Public Works Department has done. During
the project we were able to replace over 8,000 feet of aged sewer main, 7,300 feet of
aged and undersized water main and took the opportunity to also install over 6,000 feet
of new fiber optics conduit for future use. Original contract price was 2.6 million dollars.
However, we did have about 182,000 dollars of change orders due to mostly
unforeseen utility conflicts during construction and that brought the total contract price to
2.8 million. Thanks.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Skoro: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, my name is Emily Skoro. I'm a staff
engineer under Clint Dolsby. I am the project manager on the 2014 sewer manhole
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retrofit and line repair project. The wastewater treatment plant collection staff reviewed
UCTV information and inspect the conditions of the existing pipe and manholes
throughout the year. This project was put together to address the worst manhole and
pipe issues identified. The types of repairs include structural repairs to manholes to
eliminate infiltration, trench assigned point repairs, repair of protruding services and
coating of manholes with excessive corrosion. This project helped reduce infiltration
into the collection system. The original cost of 88,000, with no net changes, for a total
cost of 88,000. Water, sewer, recycled water extensions are very important to
maintaining growth throughout the city of Meridian. Some of the reasons for extensions
is to continue to build and improve the existing distribution and collection system and to
work in conjunction with road projects to save money and limit inconveniences to
traveling public. Some benefits of the extensions include improving water pressure,
flow, and system robustness and to provide water and sewer services to developing
areas. Coordination of both water and sewer projects are advantageous when possible
to reduce cost and customer inconvenience. Overall cost to complete the project was
2.1 million dollars, which includes the construction of six projects. Here is a list of the
six construction projects completed in the last fiscal year. Each project manager will
describe each of their projects. I was the project manager on the -- the Waltman water
line extension. The city identified a missing segment of water main on West Waltman
Street from 660 feet west of Linder Road to Linder Road. The city constructed the
missing section of water main in order to complete a loop serving the adjacent
neighborhood to provide the service. The cost -- original contract was 75,000. Net
changes of 8,000 for a total of 83,000.
Boyd: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, once again I'm here to present a couple
more projects to you. First one being Meridian Heights water meter project. This
project installed 112 single and 33 double water service meters on existing service
lines, as well as three new water meters -- thank you. Hard to remember all this stuff.
As well as three new water meters and service lines to homes out there. This project
was substantially complete on October 27th, which was about a month and a half ahead
of the December 10th requirement. The original contract was 395,000. We had net
changes of 40,000 dollars, for a total of 435,000. Background on that was existing
water line feeding the well on Harris Street was not within an easement. Since we had
fund remaining on the project we saw an opportunity to abandon that water line, as well
as the existing well. To enable this abandonment we installed a new water line from the
Springfield -Carbondale intersection to Harris Street that should enhance water flow and
pressure and we extended the existing water line in Harris Street to the east about 60
feet. Next project was the ACHD Franklin Road, Ten Mile to Linder Road, project. We
put 4,100 feet of 12 inch recycled water line in Franklin. We put a four inch recycled
water line in conduit in the center of Franklin Road for potential future medians. We
installed 300 lineal foot of 18 inch sewer line that, by the way, was 28 foot deep. Very
deep sewer line. And 250 lineal foot of water line and hydrants to go along with it. The
cost of that project was one million. We had changes of only 7,000 dollars on there, for
a total of a million dollars. One note. We received 186,000 dollars from property owner
reimbursements on that project that went to the Enterprise Fund. That's not part of that
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one million. So, you don't see that in there. Thank you very much. Appreciate your
time.
Blake: Madam Mayor and Council Members, I was also project manger for the Ustick,
Locust Grove to Leslie Way, project. The ACHD road widening project necessitated
some city utility work and made other work advantageous. With this project five new
hire hydrants were installed along Ustick Road at intersections and other strategic
locations. Water and sewer services were provided to three residences, two of which
had their wells or septic tanks removed during the construction. Eight inch water and
sewer stubs were installed to a future subdivision. Existing valves and manholes were
adjusted and the plans also called to adjust the water main under new storm -- ACHD
storm drain pipe crossing. The original contract was for 73,000 dollars. Net changes
were negative 10,000 dollars, for a total of 63,000 dollars. Most of the cost savings
resulted from working with ACHD to install the storm drain, so that our water line did not
need to be adjusted. And with that I will go ahead and turn the time over to Kyle Radek.
Radek: The next project we want to discuss is the Locust Grove water line extension
where we constructed 3,100 feet of 16 inch water transmission main from our new
booster station to Redwood Drive. This project was a significant step in enabling
development in southern Meridian and building a distribution system to serve future
needs. The project was also designed in conjunction with ground reservoir number two
and booster station. Originally the booster station design included posting and pump
cans to serve future development in pressure zone five, which we did not anticipate for
several years and a resurgence of development interest in southern Meridian, starting
with Reflection Ridge, provided a need to build the pressure zone five, the planned
distribution system. Meridian Reflection Ridge development was required to provide a
temporary booster station to supply the development with pressure zone five, so rather
than require them to build a temporary asset, which would become obsolete, we worked
with them to set aside the requirement by contributing to our permanent capital project.
So, the original contract for this construction was 448,000 dollars. However, there was
not as much imported pit run and backfill material needed as was estimated, so the
changes were negative 30,000 and total cost of construction was 418,000.
Blake: Madam Mayor, Members of Council, I was the project manager on the Well 24
flush line project, which is a relatively small project. We completed -- we installed
approximately 100 feet of 12 inch pressure water pipe and 120 lineal feet of 12 inch
water class gravity pipe. As a result of this project water division staff are now able to
flush the Well 24 system and our whole distribution system on that portion of town
without even getting out in Linder Road, so that's a benefit to them and the traveling
public as well. The original contract was 66,000 dollars. We had significant changes
percentagewise on this project due to I guess faulty record drawings that were designed
off of, so that brought the total amount to 96,000 dollars.
Dolsby: Good afternoon, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. Clint Dolsby,
assistant city engineer. In fiscal year 2014 we completed a total of four projects at the
wastewater treatment plant for an overall value of 600,000 dollars. It's by no means all
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the work that we have going on out there. These are the projects that we completed in
FY -14. So, with that I will turn it over to Emily Skoro for the first project.
Skoro: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I am the project manager on the first
line on irrigation of recycled water project. And above ground irrigation system was
installed on approximately 10.5 acres in an unused portion of the wastewater treatment.
plant. The irrigation system was installed and the area seeded to utilize recycled water
produced from the wastewater treatment plant. Currently the city can only use the
recycled water at its major water consumers, the park, and interchange at night. The
installed irrigation system allows the wastewater treatment plant to use the reused water
during the day to spread out the usage time. This is very advantageous to the
wastewater treatment plant, because it allows the wastewater treatment plant to utilize
its own reuse affluent, allows them to work fully with our water reusers. It also
increases the effluent usage from the plant, which helps to stay in compliance with our
current NPDES permit. The original cost was 52,000, with no net changes, for a total of
52,000. The next project is the sampling station improvement. The City of Meridian
hired -party safety consulting firm to identify any errors and concerns at the wastewater
treatment plant. The downstream sampling station was identified through this process.
The original downstream sampling station was somewhat unsafe and made it a
challenge for the operations to have to collect samples from the creek. Therefore, to
increase the safety of the wastewater treatment plant staff and allow the staff to take
required water samples, a new sampling bridge and staircase were designed and
installed. The original contract 54,000 with no net changes, for a total of 54,000. The
next project is the secondary clarifier recoating project. The wastewater treatment plant
is required to maintain its existing infrastructure. Due to the corrosive environment in
the secondary clarifier, the mechanical equipment starts to rust over time. By recoating
the clarifier every five years the wastewater treatment plant can prolong longevity of the
secondary clarifier. This project consisted of power washing, sand blasting, and
painting all of the seals before the bridge of the existing clarifier. The original contract
was for 43,000, with no net changes, for a total of 43,000. Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Skoro: Now for David.
Allison: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, David Allison, project manager for the
engineering department. Our final project here is the RV dump. With the expansion of
our existing laboratory it was determined that the RV dump facility either needed to be
relocated or the service discontinued. Per the direction of Council we decided to
relocate that facility on site. You can see it here in the picture. We expanded it to
include two lanes -- a third lane for a cuing of heavy traffic on the holiday weekends. It
has turned out really well with great -- great feedback from the citizens and the people
that use it. The original contract price for 394,000 dollars for construction. We had net
changes of negative 2,000 dollars, for a total 392,000. 1 will turn it over to Warren
Stewart.
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Stewart: Once again, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council -- oh, thanks, Kyle. So,
this is kind of a summary -- financial summary of the projects that we completed this
year. There were 20 projects that were completed. That's not the number of projects
that we worked on, but that's the number that was actually finished. The total contract
amount was 11.3 million. Actual cost was 11.26 million dollars. There is a difference of
42,000 dollars, which means that there was a net increase of minus 0.4 percent on the
projects that were completed. One of the questions that we often get with regards to
the projects that we completed and doing this project close-out presentation is regarding
change orders. I wanted to take just a minute to talk about that a little bit, so that we,
you know, kind of -- maybe answer some questions proactively, but we also make sure
that everybody is on the same page. There are lots of reasons for change orders. But
in our world, every time there is an adjustment to the original contract amount it is
processed as a change order. It doesn't matter what the reason is. It doesn't matter
whether that's a positive or a negative number, it's processed as a change order. And
so I wanted to take just a minute to talk about some of these change orders and what --
what precipitates those. One -- probably the one that most people think of when they
think about change orders is errors or omissions. These are generally the result of
mistakes or missed opportunities by either the design team or a contractor and they can
result in significant costs and take a lot of time to resolve and are probably the most
challenging of the change orders to deal with. We had one of those out at the
wastewater treatment plant regarding the concrete strength on the foundation for the
lab. It took us some time. We did get it resolved. On the plus side, the good thing is is
usually the responsible person or party for the error generally ends up taking
responsibility for the cost associated -- or the vast majority of the cost associated with
that change order. The other category of change orders that occur are those that are
related to unforeseen site conditions. The vast majority of the work that we do in the
Public Works Department is underground construction and is a bit of a discovery
environment and although we do try and do exploratory work ahead of time and
discover some of the -- the key components that may be -- that we may need to
consider during the design phase, it is impossible for us to eliminate all the variables
that we might run into in underground construction and oftentimes we do find things that
require us to make an adjustment. Two examples that you have seen today would be
the 8th Street project that John Boyd talked about. We believed, based on preliminary
information, that we were going to have to bring in imported fill for the backfill of that
sewer line. Fortunately, when we excavated the trench we found it was -- part of it was
probably due to the time of the year we were there and so forth, but we found that the
material in the bottom was suitable for -- for backfill and we were able to reuse that and,
therefore, we were able to have a deductive change order. Substantial one on that
project. Kyle also talked about another one like that. Meridian Heights was another
one. We had planned to abandon that well, Well, No. 1, all along, but there was a water
line that ran through the backyards of houses from one street to the other on two
different blocks and we were planning to keep that originally until we discovered that
that water line was not located in the easement, but was there -- there was an
easement that was created years ago, but the water line wasn't installed there and it
actually ran underneath some houses and we knew the long term that was not a viable
option for us and we took it -- we had money in the budget, we took advantage of that
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opportunity to go ahead while the contractors were -- abandon that line, replace it with a
new line that was in the public right of way and overall ended up with a much better
project and I think it was the right decision to make. The other kind of change order that
we run into are what I would refer to as opportunistic. There are occasions, especially it
happens out at the wastewater treatment plant where we uncover all of that stuff -- the
spaghetti that's underground and there is a lot of spaghetti at the wastewater treatment
plant and we discovered that things are -- valves, fittings, things like that, that are in bad
shape and we take the opportunity to go ahead and replace them at that time, because
it's a lot less expensive to take care of them then than it would be to have a separate
project to come back after we had finished the other one and restore it all, to come back
and dig it all up and do it over. So, those are the three different kinds of change orders
that we deal with commonly. In looking at those I wanted to take just a moment -- kind
of look at some industry standards and benchmarks and kind of what we have to go by
and let you know what those are and where we stand in relationship to that. As an
industry, if you take a look at a capital program like ours, as a whole, and you calculate
the percent increase on our capital projects. If you're able to get less than a ten percent
increase on -- on your projects, that's generally considered acceptable. Not fantastic,
but generally considered number. I mean there is a lot of -- a lot of corporations and
companies that when they bid projects out that there is an allotment for changes. They
add ten percent to the project knowing that there is a good chance that they will fall
somewhere within that. Less then five percent increase on projects is considered to be
an exception -- exceptional number. That's what a lot of municipalities and corporations
shoot for on capital construction is less than five percent. Historically the City of
Meridian change order percentage on our capital projects is as follows: In 2011 we had
a 2.5 percent net change -- or increase. In 2012 it was two percent. 2013 it was three
percent and this year our increase is actually negative. We have a negative 0.4 percent
increase on our overall capital construction projects. So, I just wanted the opportunity to
share that with you and let you know that the staff is -- is -- I'm very proud of them for
the work that they do. They often comment that they are -- they are -- many of them live
here in the City of Meridian and they consider that their own money and so they are
trying to look out for the citizens and that they are trying to do the right thing and they
are trying to make sure that contractors and consultants are treating the city and the
citizens fairly and I'm very grateful for the work that they do plan, for the things that they
have accomplished. And with that I just wanted to -- this is Dean's project, so we didn't
Want to leave him out. So, this is reservoir site number three that we purchased this
year. There was an existing structure on that and he was responsible for the demolition
and clean up of that site and this is a photo of the work that Dean has done so far while
he is here at the City of Meridian and although that doesn't look so impressive, one day
there will be a nice reservoir on that particular facility and we thank you guys for your
support of the engineering division and we are grateful that we have the opportunity to
do this work for you and I will stand for any questions.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Thank you, Warren. Mr. Bird.
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Bird: I don't have any questions. I got a couple of statements. I -- as you know, I'm the
biggest one about the change orders. I appreciate that -- that last slide. I knew we had
done a lot better. I think -- I think the persistence that you guys have done with your
consultings and your people that are drawing it is helping, too. I understand
underground you can find things different. My other statement is is John Boyd needs a
gold medal for his Franklin project, because the way he had to handle one client out
there, he deserves a gold medal for that. And now I got a question. Kyle, tell me how
you -- how you did the uranium, how you -- how far down did you have to go and how
does that stop the uranium if it don't go -- if it don't sleeve all the way down the -- how
do you get it out of the water is what I'm trying to get at?
Radek: Madam Mayor, Councilman Bird, we don't get it out of the water, we just don't
get the water that has it in it.
Bird: Well, that's what I'm -- how do you separate in the well down there at the depth --
you have a certain depth where the uranium is and, then, as you go on down where it
isn't in it?
Radek: Generally that's correct, Councilman Bird. We found -- we are learning a lot
and we really have three contaminants that we are -- that are troublesome here. Iron,
manganese, and uranium. If you go deep you get iron manganese and I guess a
couple of the surprises like uranium and hydrogen sulfide. But if you go shallow you
don't want any of the stinky stuff and, then, you got uranium.
Bird: Yeah.
Radek: But what we found is there is a lot of layers. There are -- we have test wells
that have 13 different zones, because there is sand layers and clay layers and sand
layers and clay layers just going all the way down and the chemistry in those layers is
different. So, what can happen is you can -- if you pump a well as long as Well 25 was
pumped you can start drawing from the different layers and start changing the natural
gradients that are in there, which was what we think was occurring. So, we -- we
blocked off that layer where we thought the uranium was coming from and we also
decreased the pumping -- the pumping capacity a little bit, so we don't want to be
drawing that water down, so we are just getting from the layers we want and moving
forward on our wells -- and this is -- this is real common. Well, 20-B we had the same
thing. So, on our well projects we are -- we are becoming more and more aware. We
are getting smarter and smarter about this aquifer and what parts we can -- we can get
at and how much we can pump them, because, you know, a lot of operators, they would
really prefer to pump that shallower oxidized water that doesn't have the iron
manganese and ammonia and sulfides in it and see how much we can pump those
without drawing uranium, so --
Bird: Thank you very much.
De Weerd: Other comments?
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Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Just more a comment for the whole team. Specifically related to that large
project south of Meridian. I know that's been a unique challenge for you in dealing with
our community and I really feel like our community's representation was on the line with
that project and it's one that I'm darn proud of and it's one that you guys should all be
proud of and it's one that even those vocal opponents now are darn proud of and I think
it's a credit to your guys following through on what you said you were going to do in
putting together a great project. You should all be really proud of that.
Rountree: It was a great year, but it sets a pretty high standard and I wish you well next
year.
De Weerd: Well, I guess I would just say that -- that project meeting really underscores
lessons learned and, you know, sometimes how we find adversity and we learn from it
and we move on. But I don't know if we still do a good enough job in celebrating
successes. That project did turn into a success. It certainly didn't start out looking that
way, but it turned out good and the example you showed better using your crystal ball,
so that you didn't have change orders --that's really tough and I could even say that
even though Mr. Bird is a real stickler about the change orders, he worked in the -- in
that field and I can guarantee you he had change orders, because he did the windows
on my house.
Bird: I loved every bit of it. If they were added
De Weerd: So, I think what you guys have done has been amazing and -- guys was
general. Gals and guys. It's just great and we appreciate your diligence. We
appreciate the fact that you treat your budgets like it's your money, because it really is.
Those of us that live here it is and we know that even if you don't live here you will know
it is. So, thank you for that and thank you for looking at ways to save time, to be
efficient with your budgets. It showed and sometimes if even you have an increase you
still are doing those things. So, I don't want to take that away from you. I just want to
thank you for what you do. You guys are great.
Stewart: Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Item 6: Community Items/Presentations
A. Solid Waste Advisory Commission 2014 Annual Report
De Weerd: Okay. Under Community Items/Presentations, we will kick this off with
Steve Cory, who is representing our SWAC committee to give their annual report.
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Cory: Madam Mayor, Members of the City Council, my name is Steve Cory. I'm the
chairman of the Solid Waste Advisory Commission and I appreciate this opportunity to
look at the activities that we had this last year and talk with you about our commission.
There are some members of my commission that are here and I very much appreciate
their support. Over the course of the last year we were fully staffed and we had one
commissioner that wrapped up his tenure with the commission and I do want to call out
Commissioner Jeff Townsen and point out how much we very much appreciated his
participation and service with our commission. We have a new member starting this
year. Scott Walters. And I foresee some activities that we have got that his abilities
and talents will work very well with and I hope to kind of identify what those are later in
this presentation. One of the activities that we have had is our community recycling
fund program. Money that is generated from the recyclable materials, but over the
course of the last few years the recyclable market has not been very good and so at the
beginning of this last year we had a balance of just over 1,000 dollars and there was no
contributions to that account over the course of the last year. SWAC voted to not open
an application window for new projects in fiscal year'14 and this softness in the market
was of interest to us and so we currently have a subcommittee working on this to
determine if there is some ways that we might be able to change how we operate and
maybe turn that around and start getting positive flow into that account, since there
have been no contributions to that account we will not have a project application window
in fiscal year '15. We did have two projects that we presented previously, but finished
this last year. One of them was a contribution of 20,000 dollars to the split corridor art
project, which was installed in September and a second one was to contribute 5,000
dollars to the City of Meridian environmental division graphics animation. It Starts At
Home participation in the solid waste and recycling services video, as many of you may
be aware, that's now an award-winning series and we are very proud of our participation
in that. Another major activity this list year was participation in the Ada County Landfill
tip fee schedule stakeholder committee. Two of our commissioners represented the
City of Meridian's interest in that committee and the results of the committee was
development of a two part fee structure. One that was presented for drive -up
customers up at the landfill that was based on weight, which helped the county,
because their personnel don't have to get out and climb on vehicles and inspect waste
when it comes in, they can just weight it, get their fees, and it reduced their liabilities,
but they did allow us for the commercial services to remain on a volume based process,
so that it didn't affect our ratepayers and allowed us to efficiently operate our transfer
station here. So, it was a very good process. Another aspect of that was the
development of Ada County Solid Waste Committee, a citizens committee to advise the
county on their solid waste operations and I want to thank you for being appointed to
represent the city on that committee and if you were not aware I did accept
responsibility for leading that committee and I hope that we can go ahead and make a
valuable committee for this valley and that Meridian's interest can be represented. And
next I would like to go ahead and just highlight some things that I couldn't -- you know,
our relationship with Republic Services has been very good. They have been extremely
helpful and informative on the waste management industry and we do want to call out
particularly they picked up an intern this summer who did an outreach program with
people who have not picked up a recycle cart and were able to bring in a number of
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people that started use of a recycled cart and I very much appreciated that self effort
that they brought forth and they continue to work on a grass recycling program and I will
talk a little bit about that in a minute, about how that's affecting us. But for right now I
will highlight some of the things that the Commission has made its plans going forward.
As I mentioned, we do have a subcommittee reviewing the terms and conditions of the
franchise agreement to see if there is some things that are appropriate to make it -- to
facilitate our recycling and see if we can't get a positive cash stream coming from our
recycling effort. Second, we are monitoring the grass recycling program. Third, we are
looking at expanding the role of the youth commissioner from MYAC and we very much
appreciate having that person on our commission and we are monitoring glass recycling
activities. Included in your package was a table and this is a transcription of some of
the numbers that come from the last two reports -- annual reports on our -- the waste
generated in the valley and while this is not final, it does kind of give us some talking
points, despite the growth over the last year, the amount of waste that's collected by the
trucks that are on the routes have stayed essentially the same and the amount of
material that our citizens are bringing out on the curb to recycle has stayed essentially
the same. In fact, the -- there is essentially no difference in the percentage of material
that was being recycled at a little under 11 percent. But with the other programs that
are occurring, like the grass and the 700 tons of grass that was side pocketed, which
did increase the amount of material that's being diverted from the waste stream from 11
to 12 percent and these new projects I think are going to be very helpful to the city as
we go forward, kind of looking at the commercial and industrial areas, there was a
significant jump this last year from 12 to 17 percent that they were diverting from their
waste streams and this is all extremely good, even though the market for recycling has
been soft over the course of the full year what we were being charged per ton of that
material, the cans, glass -- not glass, but cans, plastic, paper and such was a little under
15 dollars a ton. So, we were happy to pay 15 dollars a ton to get rid of that material,
but if it goes up to the landfill, what the landfill is charging for disposal is 33 dollars a
ton. So, it is -- even in this market is less expensive for this material to be handled the
way that we are handling it and so we intend to encourage -- continue to encourage
people to divert from the waste stream and hopefully with the way that the commission
-- our subcommittee comes out there might be some ways to turn that around and make
it ever more beneficial to us and what I was alluding to is that we recognize that that
may result in our need to have an outreach effort and, again, our new commissioner has
some experience in -- in public outreach and with our MYAC representative Ashlyn
Burgess -- the name escapes me, but, regardless, I'm hoping that we might be able to
go ahead and get people thinking about, you know, when they are taking a paper or a
can out to the -- to their cans out in their garage or where ever they are, that they realize
that it's valuable to put it in the one with the red lid, instead of the one with the green lid
and so it -- it really comes right down to their point when they are making the decision of
which waste stream or which product stream these go into. And one final thing. We
were surprised last month when we were at the committee meeting for the county and
the county supplied us with a couple of reports. One of them is a -- an analysis of the
waste that is being delivered up to the county landfill and to kind of go -- well, just to
make you aware of some of the things that jumped up as a result of that. There is an
indication in there that about 20 percent of the waste, regardless of whether it's single
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February 10, 2015
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family -- from a single family or a multi -family type facility or even the commercial or roll
off activities, in all cases about 20 percent of the material that's in the waste is food,
beyond expired -- expiration date, imperfect -- whatever reasons it's present in there
and the city of Boise has a very high priority to develop a third can that would be this
type of material. Now, I don't now whether that will impact us at all, but we are certainly
watching what they do and we are going to have to be aware, as that affects -- that's
half the citizens in our county. But more so I think what we intuitively know on yard and
wood waste, the things that could be used for composting or other activities, of course,
that has a little bit more variety as to how much of it is present in the various ways that
waste gets up to the landfill. About half of what's driven up to the landfill is that type of
waste, yard waste and wood waste, whereas for our single family it's about a quarter
and multi -family, of course, they usually contract out those services, so it's only about
four percent of their waste stream. Businesses similarly contract out. So, it's only about
ten percent of their stream. About a quarter of the waste that goes up there regardless
of source is yard waste and wood waste and so we can change the very interested in --
in that. Again, we have had some success with the subscription grass process.
McGurdy Yost has been very -- a good partner on that activity and Republic Services in
managing this subscription service. It's been very helpful and we hope that it will be
very -- it will be a very productive place where we can help the waste stream coming
from the city. And with that I will wrap up a little quicker than maybe some of the other
things that have been going on today and if there is any questions that you have got I
Would love to address them.
De Weerd: Council, I -- Mr. Cavener --
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: -- I see you have a question.
Cavener: Steve, I'm just curious. The third cart for food waste, why -- I guess I'm not
that bright when it comes to reasons for separating food waste, but what's the rationale
behind that and what's the use of it once it's collected or what's the plan to dispose of it
once it's collected?
Cory: It would only be useful for a compost -- composting process and the county has
indicated that they seem very interested in something like that up at the landfill. They
believe they have the land, they think the permitting is conducive up there and such and
so they are -- there is a conversation which we don't necessarily participate in that is
looking at that cart being for compostable materials. I don't know whether it would
include grass or whether it would be food stuff, but the conversation is definitely going to
be a priority for Boise and the county and I hope to keep you informed in what Boise
and the county are discussing on that, because, again, maybe it's more useful for us if
it's a broader third can for yard waste and food, but if this is developing, again, things
that have been mentioned by our carrier have been that regional area wide process for
composting would be better than a city -by -city process. So, whatever they develop is
something that's beneficial, we will certain be discussing with you.
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Cavener: Great
De Weerd: Steve, I'd like to thank you for your -- your service, your leadership and
certainly your involvement at the county level. We think it's -- it's been very effective
and your voice is very respected. So, thank you for not only taking the appointment to
the county board, but also for your leadership on that. We appreciate it. Any other
questions?
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mrs. Milam
Milam: I just want to make a comment, really, that I appreciate all of the time and
dedication that you and the rest of the commissioners put in and the passion that I see
with each one of you. So, I'm very inspired by you and particularly happy to see the
recycling numbers increasing. So, thank you and keep up the good work.
De Weerd: I'm sure it's the video. You know, we are excited -- we were equally excited
about it, so I'm sure that SWAC has been ecstatic with -- with the result with how it can
have an impact and it is. So, thank you. It's exciting.
Cory: Well, thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. Obviously, as always,
we are at your service and if there is anything we can do to develop information or work
on any projects, just ask and we appreciate your input.
De Weerd: Thank you. We just appreciate that you continue to sere. Because I think
under Nancy she went -- when we kind of changed, what, our waste provider, she
thought her job was done and you have taken this to the next level and that's exciting.
So, thank you.
Cory: Well, I do give her great credit, having moved up from a committee to a
commission the activities to go to a different process for managing recyclables and
there is some huge changes over the years and the work that was done during those
times was some heavy lifting and it was done very well.
De Weerd: Absolutely. Thank you.
Cory: Thank you.
B. Arts Commission 2014 Annual Report
De Weerd: Okay. Item 6-B is under our Arts Commission. Another very active
commission that's making things happen in this community.
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Jensen: Thank you, Madam Mayor and City Council. My name is Mary Jensen and I
am the chair person of the Meridian Arts Commission. This might be my least favorite
performance venue, but I am thrilled to be at least telling about our accomplishments for
the year 2014. As you know we get to operate the Initial Point Gallery found on the third
floor. In 2014 that was in the very capable hands of one of our commissioners Dwight
Williams. We continue to operate monthly exhibits and really our only new addition this
year were two new ladders, which have actually made our volunteers that work in the
gallery incredibly happy and very stable. They are stable people anyway, but now they
are more stable when they climb. So, we are grateful to help them, because we are
very grateful for all the work that they do for us in keeping the gallery running and
operating and so anything that we can do to help them we are thrilled to do. We also
have been able to have another fabulous year of our Concerts On Broadway series.
We did add a fourth concert to the season this year, as well as adding four student
opening acts to each concert, one to each concert, but four in total. It also marked a
year where Kevin Kirk released a new CD and we were able to provide one of his
concerts as a CD launch party. So, a lot of excitement around each one of those
concerts. Our commissioner Leslie Mauldin has chaired those events for us and done a
marvelous job. As you can see, we also get to bring on volunteers that would be the
Treasure Valley Youth Theater that were selling water and beverages and lots of great
partnerships happen with Concerts On Broadway and we are, as always, thrilled about
that series and hope to continue it this year. Again, we always get great feedback, but
we love to hear it and we love to provide it to you. Basically just thinking as providing
this wonderful entertainment and how great the family atmosphere is. People love
coming. They never miss it. We every year get people that that's the very first time they
have heard of it or seen it before and, then, they make it a priority to come back to each
concert year after year. In 2014 we were able to provide our sixth season of Children's
Theater in Meridian. This year MAC was able to sponsor two shows through the
Treasure Valley Youth Theater. Our first show we sponsored was in the spring, Peter
Pan, Jr. One hundred and eighteen children auditioned, 55 were cast and used, and in
the fall Seussical, Jr. -- Seussical the Musical, and 90 children auditioned and 30 were
cast. Again, another great way for us to partner with local theater organizations and
also we have had great partnerships, including the Parks and Rec Department, who
have helped us immensely in securing spaces for allowing these youth to perform. In
2014 we were able to sponsor the young musician and young artists awards. The
young musician award is in partnership with the Meridian Symphony and we were able
to present three young musicians with a cash award and they ended up playing with the
Meridian Symphony. At that point we were also able to invite some of those young
musicians to play as opening acts for our Concerts On Broadway series and that's one
of the pictures you see and that is a young woman named Lauren Vanderveldon and
she was one of the young musician award recipients and, then, she was one of our first
ever student opening acts for concerts on Broadway, which was exciting. We also were
able to sponsor three young artist awards in partnership with the Meridian School
District and their art show. Out of that art show and competition came our first ever
traffic box art and that's what you're seeing there as well. In 2014 we were finally able
to complete our Meridian split corridor phase two public art project with the piece Under
The Sun and Dreaming by artist C.J. Rench. I don't think I need to say anything about
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it. The pictures I think speak for themselves and we are just thrilled to have a public art
piece of that magnitude here in Meridian. A few of our other highlights. Again I
mentioned the traffic box art. In order to display our traffic box art, as well as our large
art piece, we were able to host an art walk for community members to get to see and
experience those pieces, as well as our art gallery in one evening and that was very
well received. We also got to say farewell to one of our long-standing arts commission
members. Nancy Rountree left the commission last year and although we miss her, we
were grateful for her leadership and her vision in all that she did. She was one of the
founding members of the Meridian Arts Commission and we were thrilled to be able to
honor her. We also were able to add a new member of the Meridian Arts Commission
Michelle Glaze representing Meridian Power is one of our newest commission
members, as well as a new youth commissioner Cheyenne Quilter and they have both
been doing great work on the Commission. We are thrilled and happy with all of the
projects we were able to undertake and complete in 2014. However, we don't let the
grass grow under our feet very long at the arts commission, so we are looking forward
to 2015 where we already have a number of things on the docket. Our final -- I don't
know how we should phrase that -- our final arts commission member -- original arts
commission member, that's it, Dwight Williams will be retiring from the commission in
February and we are sad to see him go, but we, again, honor him and all the great work
that he has done for us and especially for establishing the art gallery Initial Point. We
are also sponsoring another youth theater production. It will open in March. It is Annie
Jr. with the Treasure Valley Youth Theater and they will be performing at Mountain View
High School. Over 250 children auditioned this year and over 60 have been cast and
they are working hard and we are excited to see the fruits of their labors and ours in a
few more weeks. We are hoping to oversee the production of at least five more traffic
box art pieces this year and we are excited to get those started. Also our youth
commissioner Cheyenne is organizing a student art show that will take place in the
gallery in March. So, we are looking forward to seeing that. She's done a great job of
organizing that and we know that that's going to be a really exciting event for her and for
the youth that will be participating in it. We like to think that we are a working
commission, the arts commission, and we would ask that if you have any requests or --
or ideas for us that you, please, send them through our Council representative and we
would be greatly appreciative of any feedback that -- that we can have or anything that
you see necessary for the continuation of the arts in Meridian. Thank you for your time.
De Weerd: Mary, it's been a huge year. Your efforts have -- are on display to our
community and I love the new partnership with the Treasure Valley Children's Theater.
The Missoula Children's Theater was always fun, but having it local and really being
able to make that bigger show is -- is just tremendous. So, as always I think we sit up
here and hear the annual report and think how on earth do you guys do this and I will
give kudos to someone behind you, Emily, that really adds tremendous value to this.
Can't thank you enough as well. But, Council, I would open it up for any questions or
remarks.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
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De Weerd: Yes, Mrs. Milam
Milam: Mary, you -- you guys work very hard and it shows. But I personally am -- I'm
really enjoying the arts through the community and I have had many people come talk
to me about different art pieces that they really enjoy as well and I try to get to as many
places as I can. I'm really happy to have it here and we appreciate everything that you
do to keep it going.
Jensen: Thank you. We do have a great commission and even though it's been said,
but our fearless leader might not be fun, she's a lot of fun when she comes to the arts
commission meetings and keeps us straight. So, we are grateful to her as well.
De Weerd: I think that's the only time she can be fun.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: What will you do without Dwight?
Jensen: Well, I don't know. Actually, we are working on filling his seat, but that doesn't
necessarily mean the void will be filled. So, we are looking.
De Weerd: Well -- and I will tell you that when -- when it's stated that this is a working
board, it -- every time we have a turnover we find out how working they are and so
enough said.
Rountree: Mary, do you have a schedule for this summer's concerts?
Jensen: It is very close to being published.
Rountree: All right.
Jensen: I would think within the next three weeks.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Are we going to have four?
Jensen: Yes. Four. The plan --
Bird: Have youth again?
Jensen: As well as student opening acts, yes.
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Bird: Are you guys backing the youth theater?
Jensen: We are.
Bird: Okay. Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you, Mary.
Jensen: Thank you.
De Weerd: Appreciate you being here.
Jensen: Thank you.
C. Meridian Transit Planning Presentation by Valley Regional
Transit
De Weerd: Item 6-C is under the Meridian Transit planning presentation
Jalbert: Good afternoon. I'm Rhonda Jalbert with Valley Regional Transit, the
development director, and, then, this is Margaret Havey, she's our service planner. So,
we will be kind of tag teaming this presentation.
De Weerd: Thank you, Rhonda.
Jalbert: So, what we are here today is we are here to talk about different scenarios that
we have put together that we have worked with your transportation council on and so
we will be talking about current conditions. There was also COMPASS. Our FPO did a
rider/non-rider survey. We will show you some of the outcome of that survey.
Specifically to the Meridian area. We will talk about the VRT vision, Valley Connect,
what type of service that we do offer and have. We will go through the scenarios and,
then, we will talk about the opportunity. So, if you would -- definitely if you have
questions during the presentation, please, stop us, we'd like to see more of a dialogue
than just a presentation. And I'm going to turn it over the Margaret.
Havey: Good afternoon, Madam Mayor and Council. So, I will talk a little bit about
current conditions. We have a Meridian transit service planning committee, which is
comprised of city staff, the Meridian Development Corporation, Council Member
Zaremba and also some community members and the Meridian Development
Corporation that have been working with us for the past I would say year and a half
looking at different transit options and it's the one that really vetted the Saturday fun bus
route and has been getting the word out about that. As far as what Valley Ride offers
Meridian right know for fixed route, we have commuter services that go mainly along the
1-84 corridor. The Route 40 is a Nampa -Meridian express that goes down into Boise
and just as an example of the yearly ridership -- and this is the number of total
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boardings in the year -- it gets about 52,500 boardings per year and that's a Monday
through Friday route for commuters. The Route 42, the Nampa -Meridian limited stop
also goes into Boise, but it's a little bit of a slower route that makes more stops and that
gets about 30,000 rides per year. Valley Regional Transit also has a couple of
community mobility projects. Since the Saturday fun bus runs at such a limited time
period, we consider that just a community project and not quite a fixed route yet. We
will talk a little bit more about that later. So, we have the Saturday fun bus that runs
every Saturday in Meridian and, then, we also have a program called Community Link
which connects all the senior centers and some social service agencies, so they can
share vehicles and be more efficient with making their trips. Commuteride also
operates many van pools out of Meridian. Right now they have 19 that start in Meridian
and the vast majority of them go downtown into Boise. Like Rhonda said, there was --
COMPASS recently completed the Nampa community survey. They did this at -- fall of
last year. In Ada and Canyon county there were a total of 405 interviews completed
and it was a random sampling statistically valid for that larger area. What I was able to
do is pull out the two Meridian zip codes, so we can look and see what the Meridian
residents were saying about transit in the area and this was the general public survey.
We also had one that surveyed people who actually rode the bus, but this -- more I will
be presenting is just the general public and we had about 60 respondents that lived in
Meridian zip codes. Respondents were asked on zero to ten scale a bunch of different
questions and I just pulled out a couple to let you see how they compared to other
areas. They were asked if public transportation is something that this area needs and in
Meridian 59 percent of people had very strong support for that, answering a nine or ten,
which meant they strongly agreed and only seven percent said that it was not
something that Meridian needed. Another question was providing public transportation
services is a good way to spend tax dollars and compared to both Ada and Canyon
county, the all -- a total of 75 percent said that it was a good way to spend tax dollars.
So, we also asked them of their likelihood to ride public transportation. When asked I
would personally use public transportation if it were -- if convenient service was
available that gets me from my home to places I typically go. So, that was a pretty --
Meridian residents had a pretty typical response of if the buses went where they needed
to go they would be -- they were agreeable to ride it with over 60 percent of people
saying that they had moderate to strong support for that. We also asked them if they
could never see themselves riding public transportation and 48 percent said, no, that at
some point they could see themselves getting on a bus if it's for a special event or for
work or any other purpose. We asked them also where they would be likely to go if it
was available and this -- this chart shows people from Meridian not -- it wasn't the valley
wide one, so people from Meridian said that they would be likely to go to downtown
Boise, to The Village, Boise Town Square Mall, and, then, I was -- we were pretty
surprised that Boise State University was so low on the list. But people were unlikely to
say that they were -- that they would go anywhere west as well, to CWI or downtown
Nampa.
Jalbert: So, Valley Regional Transit has a vision and we call it Valley Connect. So, it's
basically our comprehensive plan to promote alternative transportation being the
regional transit authority for this and it takes into account -- into account growth
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projections and, then, land use and road plans. So, the types of service that we
typically provide in the first route bus, we provide a commuter or express -- so,
basically, it's from like 6:00 to 9:00 in the morning and, then, 5:00 to 7:00 in the evening
and it has limited stops and it's trying to get people, you know, from their residences to
work. We also have what we call local fixed routes and all day service. It typically has
more frequent stops and it's kind of -- I want to say Kelly calls it the bread run or
something like that.
Havey: The milk run.
Jalbert: The milk run. That's what she calls it. But with local fixed route comes para -
transit service and what that does is that if you were unable to ride the fixed route buses
is that you will see the smaller cutaway buses around that are called access and they
will give curb to curb service to people who are in wheelchairs or disabled. You do
need to apply for that and get approved, because the cost of that is substantially more
than just getting onto a fixed route bus. We also have flex routes where we will define
an area and, then, you actually call in, you don't have to be preapproved for this, and,
then, the bus will come pick you up and you will be picked up in that area and delivered
within that area. So, it's a defined area. And that is not the best use, but sometimes in
more rural communities it works a lot better than trying to do a fixed route type of
busing. So, the Valley Regional Board put together a policy and they determined that
70 percent of our service is going to be based upon ridership and demand and, then, 30
percent of the service will be serving the transit dependent population, so the life line to
seniors and disable people who don't have access to transportation. That's basically
the 30 percent. So, we do take a look at the ridership that we do have and we do have
performance measures. What we are required to do is -- by the Federal Transit
Administration, it's called the National Transit Database and we submit our yearly
ridership and as Margaret showed you earlier, the ridership on the 42 and 40. So, we
do have -- we do have that. And, then, also as we are putting our services together we
need to take into account Title 6, which is civil rights, which is insuring that we are
making an even distribution across -- across the area. So, part of the -- in putting
together -- Margaret is going to talk about the different scenarios that we have next, but
we did put together some cost on the scenarios. One of the things -- a couple of the
assumptions that we made -- all of the -- all of our vehicles are currently allocated for
the weekdays, so any service that we provide to Meridian we would more than likely
have to lease some vehicles. In order to purchase a 40 foot bus it is a two year lead
time and we have got six buses on order right now. Mainly to replace existing vehicles
that need to be replaced, because all of our buses are CNG and the tanks have a
certain life on them. So, we did in the -- in the matrix that you will receive we estimated
60K per year to lease a vehicle and, then, we would update those costs to be able to
put money in to purchase a vehicle. So, we also have estimated in the cost -- it's based
on service hours, so you will have an operating cost, which is based on service hours
and, then, you will have the equipment, which is the leasing of the buses and in the
operating it does include the labor, which could either be on an hourly basis with one of
our current operators that we have or contracting that out, because we did contract out
the Saturday service, we put an RFP out and it was actually one of our -- our Canyon
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county provider was the one who won that RFP. So, I'm going to let Margaret talk about
the -- the scenarios and I will hand out the matrix while she's talking.
Havey: So, the first scenario would be sort of a basic putting your toe in the water of
transit service and there is two different options and so we looked at basically the
number of service hours, like Rhonda mentioned. So, if we had roughly 6,000 service
hours per year we could provide one weekday local route, which would run Monday
through Friday, probably about 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. and it would circulate through
Meridian. It could look a lot -- very similar to the Saturday route, but we would definitely
modify it for weekday destinations, like major employers and St. Luke's. And these type
-- this type of route would be aimed towards getting people moving through Meridian,
people who don't have other transportation options, either elderly, disabled, or -- or
adolescents without driver's licenses. The other option for scenario one would be to do
a commuter focused route. This -- this option would require more vehicles in order to
get a decent frequency in the peak hours and so it would only run from about 6:00 a.m.
until I think -- I can't remember -- it was on the -- on the chart there. But, then, there
would be no service in the mid day and, then, there would be p.m. peak service. It
would -- these type of routes are a lot more straight forward. They have -- they are
focused at people who have regular work schedules and are able to ride consistently,
so it's likely to have higher ridership and both of these maps that are on the presentation
are just conceptual, so it's -- we are not sure if it would look something like this, but with
our transportation committee we were talking about utilizing existing resources, like the
parking lots at large city parks has park and rides as a possibility. So, the cost options
were roughly 6,000 revenue hours per year, with a local that would -- the operating and
equipment would total to about 600,000 dollars per year or the commuter option would
total about 725,000 dollars per year. The second scenario would be more a complete
transit system. It's 10,000 service hours per year and it would be a combination of
some local route, but also peak time commuter service. This -- when you combine the
two different transit routes, they tend to kind of feed into each other, so people can ride
one bus and, then, transfer, but also it gives people more options and there is a
likelihood that they kind of feed off each other, because when you have one route that's
out in the middle of nowhere it kind of operates like an island and when you connect the
system, then, you're likely to see better performance measures. And, then, we threw in
what we -- what in our Valley Connect plan is the optimal system. It would have up to
12 or -- 12 routes and about 35 vehicles operating. On the chart there you will see a
line and it seems like, oh, it will -- it will be a lot cheaper per hour to do the optimal
system, but that -- that number on that chart for the operating and cost is just the
Meridian portion, because a lot of these are -- go across jurisdictions, so those costs
would be shared with other jurisdictions in the county.
Jalbert: So, in looking at this matrix, the one thing that is missing is that in the total cost
of the local one does include the para -transit. So, in Ada County our current operating
cost is about 5.2 million in -- for a fixed route and we do have about a million in para -
transit. So, I would -- I would actually bump that 600, 1 would estimate that we would
probably have another 100,000 in para -transit cost. And the number one commuter,
because it's operated on a limited basis in the mornings, in the peak hours just during
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the morning, in the afternoon you're not required to provide the para -transit service with
that. With the option number two we would probably need to add in -- because that
would be an all day service as well, I would probably add another couple hundred
thousand in there. So, you're looking at for -- you know, scenario number one, whether
it's a local or a commuter, you're looking at about 700,000 and, then, with option
number two you're probably looking at about 1.4 to 1.5 million to operate the cost. But
to put this in perspective -- so, currently Boise spends about 27 dollars per capita in
operating cost. Nampa spends four dollars. Keep in mind that Nampa is a small urban
area. Meridian and Boise are considered a large urban, so operating costs -- operating
costs are a hundred percent local. Preventative maintenance is an 80/20 match, which
is 80 percent federal, 20 local. And that is the same for capital as well. And in Nampa
being a small urban area, it's operating cost is 50/50. So, the federal government does
help them quite a bit. Currently Meridian spends about a dollar per capita and I think --
did we estimate what the cost of these would be per capita?
Havey: Oh. I'm sorry. So, under potential enhancements, under scenario one,
Meridian's cost would be between nine to ten dollars per capita and scenario two would
be 17 dollars per capita. So, any questions on this matrix or -- we did put down what --
you know, the benefits and challenges are. If you go with just the local you're going to
serve internally to your city. If you go with the commuter you're going to be looking
more at people who -- you know, are just riding in the morning and in the afternoon and
you're just taking them to -- to downtown. Number two kind of gives you the best of
both worlds. You know, you're -- you're picking up people within your city and, then,
you're taking them into downtown Boise to their jobs is what -- is what we assumed.
Our inner county routes are pretty full. A lot of times when they come through Meridian
there is not room on them for your residents to be able to get on to get into downtown
Boise to get to their jobs. So -- I mean we have -- and we are -- COMPASS has got a
transit. They are updating their Communities In Motion. Their transit plan for long
range and, then, from that we are going to do a western Ada County and Canyon
county route review, because a lot of the inter -county routes run through Meridian. So,
we are definitely going to take a look at that, making sure that we are utilizing the
funding we have to the best of its ability. Any questions or --
Rountree: Any questions?
Cavener: I have a couple. Maybe I missed this and if I did I apologize. Do you have
the approximate number of fun bus riders?
Havey: We do and it's -- it is very low. We have done quite a bit of marketing for that.
You have to consider that it is a Saturday route only, but it can vary from one per
Saturday up to -- I think we had up to 35. Oh. We had 80. We had 80 on one
Saturday. So, it really varies. We have done a lot of different marketing, you know,
especially with the movie theaters and we have promoted it quite a bit through Roaring
Springs and things like that, but, you know, it takes a while for people to realize -- kind
of like your concert series, people said that they haven't heard about it and they are just
finding out. It takes a while for people to realize that these are in play, so --
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Cavener: So, an average weekly amount of riders would be approximately how many?
It looks like you have got a --
Havey: Yeah.
Cavener: --you know, the number. I'm just really curious as to what it is.
Havey: Yeah. It's -- like Rhonda said, it's --
Cavener: Five?
Havey: -- kind of all over the place, because we have had some weekends with 40 to
80 and, then, sometimes it's one.
Cavener: So, an average of ten would maybe be a fair number?
Havey: Yeah.
Cavener: Follow up?
De Weerd: Uh-huh.
Cavener: You indicated the -- the number of rides on some of your other routes. Does
that equate to -- I mean on average how many times does a single rider ride the bus?
Meaning does -- do you divide that number by five? Do you divide that number by
three? Do you divide that number by eight? I'm just trying to get an understanding onto
how many average individuals utilize those routes.
Havey: The typical -- we can only count trips. When people are getting off and we do it
on a sampling basis -- on a random sampling. So, we will actually pull out and we will
sample that and, then, mark the riders. We are in the process of getting automatic
passenger counters, so we can determine where people are getting on and getting off
and at what times. You know, a lot of times you will see during the day that the bus
looks like there is no one on it and there is very limited ridership, but when you're
looking at the commuter --
Cavener: Right.
Havey: -- you know, those ones are packed. We don't have the information that can tell
you, you know, at noon we only have one rider per this route --
Jalbert: Well, we do. We do
Havey: We do?
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Jalbert: Yeah. In sampling you must have that
Havey: Well, if you're asking about stops -- like stops like how many -- how many riders
get on in Meridian, I think that's what Rhonda was trying to answer, but we have -- so,
the 50,000 rides is total boarding. So, that's -- anytime -- anytime somebody gets on
the bus they are counted.
Cavener: Right.
Havey: And we -- and we do that for every trip. So, if you want to divide that by 250
work days and, then, that's the number of people who ride on a typical work day. And
that's the industry standard for how we measure ridership, because when we -- not
everybody is going to be able to ride the bus every single day, but it's -- it's -- those are
trips that are taken off the road, basically.
Cavener: Sure. Do you have a number, though, that you guys work with that is we -- X
amount of Treasure Valley residents use the bus?
Havey: There is -- there is no good way to say the number of people. If you look at the
census bureau, the American Community Survey, one of the questions is if they -- if that
person uses public transit. It's really low right now, because if you look at our spending
per capita, our -- our system is pretty bare bones and so it's not a viable option for a lot
of people. So, what we are trying to do is put more options out there and make it a
viable option. But there is not really a good way to -- to measure the number of people
who have ever ridden in a bus.
Cavener: Okay. One more follow up if I may, Mayor? My last question -- I guess I'm
fairly sure I know the answer based on the two. I appreciate your sharing the
transmitting per capita. Do you have a transit -- transit spending per rider?
Havey: We do. I don't have it with me right now.
Cavener: I would -- can we -- I would love to see a copy of some of that information. It
would be really beneficial.
Havey: Okay.
Cavener: Great. Thank you very much.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Rhonda, what's -- what's the total cost for implementing the optimum plan in
Treasure Valley?
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Jalbert: What we have got down is about 4.5 million.
Rountree: Well, that's for Meridian. I'm talking about the whole system.
Jalbert: You know, I --
Rountree: I knew at one time and I have forgotten. I'm just asking.
Jalbert: We are spending about five million right now in Ada County on fixed route and,
then, we have got about 1.2 in -- in para -transit.
Rountree: Was it --
Jalbert: So, your -- even if you added the five and the four and a half, that's ten.
Rountree: The whole system. About -- I remember something like 40 million and that
just doesn't seem like it's enough.
Jalbert: Yeah.
Rountree: I'm just curious. I have got asked that question recently and I -- I couldn't
come up with a number.
Jalbert: I will find out and let you know.
Rountree: I know there was a number when the plan was completed for the entire
system.
Jalbert: Uh-huh.
Rountree: At optimum. Which if you're going to do anything at optimum you have to
have kind of the whole system to get the most ridership. Otherwise, you get one person
per bus, because it doesn't --
Jalbert: Right.
Rountree: -- provide enough service for everybody. You did show -- I think there was
19 vans in the Commuteride in Meridian area? How many is there in the system now?
Jalbert: I believe Commuteride has about a hundred --
Rountree: Okay.
Jalbert: --in service or right around there. Ninety-eight.
Rountree: So, that's about -- that's 18, 19 percent of it.
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Jalbert: Yeah.
Rountree: And is that mostly -- is that mostly out of Ada County or is that mostly Boise?
Jalbert: We think the majority of them are going to Boise, but we can find out that
information as well.
Rountree: As far as where they originate.
Jalbert: We know that they originate in Meridian and, then, they are -- oh, the 98?
Rountree: Yeah.
Jalbert: I will need to -- I can find that out and have Maureen send that information out.
So -- I know that we do have nine coming out of Kuna for stuff going mainly to Gowen
and Mountain Home.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: So, I'm not sure if I missed something. The route that is the 50,000 riders on --
Jalbert: Uh-huh.
Milam: Is that a commuter route?
Jalbert: Yes.
Milam: What is -- what is the cost of that?
Jalbert: So, our costs are done by county and so I don't have the Canyon county costs
in front of me, but I did look prior to this and our Ada County costs were about five
million and I think our Canyon county costs are more around three million. Two and a
half to three for fixed route. But it's -- it's -- I don't have the cost for the 40 and the 42.
Milam: Okay.
Jalbert: So, I can get those.
Milam: That's -- so, according to my calculations that would be -- if you have 250 work
days, 50,000 riders, roughly 200 unique riders, which is equivalent to about 15,000
dollars per rider per year? Is it --
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Jalbert: Well, those are only the two routes that service Meridian. We also have four
local routes in Canyon county and three -- four other inter -county routes that's included
in that three million dollars.
Milam: Okay.
Jalbert: And that gets -- oh, gosh. Over a million rides per year.
Milam: Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: Uh-huh.
Milam: So, in your calculations -- I mean what would the ridership be on these routes?
Because I -- I love public transportation. I would love to get cars off the roads, get, you
know, emissions out of the air. However, driving a bus around, as opposed to a little car
with one person in it doesn't satisfy that. So, I'm hoping that you have some good
numbers.
Havey: So, projecting ridership is really voodoo. It's --there is no good way to do it,
especially in a place like Meridian that doesn't really have experience with any
established routes, other than the commuter route and there is no way to know,
because the people have never had that option in Meridian and so in order to give
people options -- and that's what we aim to do, is -- that's why we are here. So, we
have to start somewhere, basically, and that's --
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
Havey: -- what we are trying to get a feel for
Jalbert: And we don't -- I apologize. We don't have the cost per ride with us today, but
we will -- it seems like that's kind of what everybody is looking for. So, we can definitely
pull that information together and give you an estimate of what an approximate cost per
ride is. Whether it's during -- you know, it may look like -- you know, you need to serve
the other population during the middle of the day to get people to and from, you know,
their homes to, you know, doctor visits, shopping, that kind of stuff. You know, it may
look like there is not that many riders, but when you're looking in your peak hours, you
know, that's -- that's one of the discussions, you know, is that -- you know, do we want
to serve the commuters or do we want to have an all day service and if we are looking
at serving the commuters, you know, then, our option number one commuter is probably
our best option to look towards. So, that's another consideration that we would like to
get some feedback from this Council on, as you know, for out next steps -- the next
steps that we take, you know, what is your goal? Who do you want to serve? And it
sounds like it's more commuters than it would be, you know, transit to the population.
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba
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Zaremba: Thank you, Madam Mayor. I -- some of it's been said, but I just want to add
that one of the difficulties of figuring out how many people would ride, as has been said,
we don't have the service, so we don't have anything to compare it to. But in the vast
scheme of Valley Regional Transit system, which is supported by Boise and by Nampa
and Caldwell and a little bit by us in the commuter route -- having this big black hole in
the middle means that the whole system doesn't work very well. We are a gap in the
existing services. If we were to fill that gap I think the whole region would change in
their use of this, so that if people were able to get where they want to go -- and that
includes Meridian for many people, or from Meridian to someplace else and come back,
it's hard to imagine what the change in the overall system would be and, then, winnow
that down to say, okay, just Meridian -- this is how many Meridian people would ride. I
think it has a much greater impact than that if we are able to get ourselves into this
market and get Meridian into this market. It has a bigger overall impact on the entire
system and my guess from having seen transit systems in other places is that it --
overall ridership would go up, including providing a service to Meridian. So, that's just a
further comment on why we can't just hit a number.
De Weerd: I think what makes it complicated is you're seeing a dollar cost for Meridian,
four dollars in Nampa and 27 for Boise, but it's not apples to apples --
• 0.
De Weerd: -- in funding formula and Canyon county they have their own transportation
and they use transportation dollars. They don't use general fund dollars. Boise has
different funding opportunities because of their size, their -- their CDBG economic status
and they are -- they are federal matching. Ours comes out of our General Fund, which
comes out of our police, out of our fire, out of our parks. That's what we are mandated
for. If we had transportation dollars actually -- you know, ACHD is our transportation
agency and I think they have to be a part of the solution. Taking it from what we are
mandated to do is -- and because we don't have the same entitlements as Boise or the
matching funds for that, it makes it really complicated and we need to have better
conversations with our transportation agency on this and how we can be a part of it.
Until local option passes I don't see that -- if local option ever becomes a tool and if it
ever is allowed to be used for operational and for O&M type of things, those are a lot of
big ifs. It's -- it is a complicated conversation and that needs to be had by those that
have transportation responsibilities and we have to be a part of it, because this is our
community.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I have further comments on that that I was going save until they finish their
next section of this, so I would ask that they continue and, then, I would -- I'm agreeing
with you, but had further comments on that.
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Jalbert: I would like to make a clarification is that Valley Regional Transit is the regional
transit authority for Ada and Canyon counties, so all of that would come through Valley
Regional Transit, rather than Ada County Highway District.
De Weerd: Well, I do understand that, but you are a valley wide transportation authority
without any funding.
Jalbert: That is correct.
De Weerd: And that's the difficulty. I don't mean to sound --
Jalbert: No.
De Weerd: -- crass or anything like that, it's just a reality that we struggle with as well.
Jalbert: Yes.
De Weerd: Because as Councilman Rountree said, until you have a full service, you
don't know how your ridership would be and who can afford that at this point if it's 4.5
million dollars --
Havey: So, I wanted to let you know -- other jurisdictions -- Boise is giving us an
additional -- we are going to be extending the service on Fairview. They are giving us
an additional 300,000 for this fiscal year and they plan on adding 150,000 every year to
improve. They have seen the benefits -- their system has been going a lot longer in
using the fixed route service, so they are wanting us to do enhancements and extend
our hours. That's one of the comments that we get quite a bit. So, we will be doing that
on Fairview. We are also looking with Kuna. We are looking at them trying to figure out
-- because they were talking about having a route go from Kuna into Meridian that
would tie up with one of the existing routes that come into Meridian. As we talked about
earlier about the western Ada and Canyon county route restructure, COMPASS is going
to do their Communities In Motion 2.0, look at the long range plan for transit and, then,
we are going to pull a group together, take that long range plan and, then, come up with
a short range plan and what can we do now with that. We are also working on -- with
ACHD and a couple of other key stakeholders of travel demand management. We were
looking at ride share platforms, so that we are all utilizing these dollars, you know, to the
best of everybody's ability. So, we also are looking at possible partnerships, you know,
like with ACHD and others. We do have an employee -- a pass program which is quite
successful where they get a discount if their riders can ride and things like that. So, I
guess we would just like to discuss, you know, which way the Council would like -- you
know, like to go, which scenario do you like the best, what are you most comfortable
with and when you would like us to come back. I will definitely get all the cost and get
that sent out to you hopefully late this -- or by the end of this week or first part of next,
so -- and I will have the cost per ride, an estimate and the total cost of the system if it
was built out and what some of the ridership numbers are, a little bit more of that, so --
so, thoughts? I mean --
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Rountree: Comments?
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I would add that this presentation was made to our Meridian Transportation
Commission a week ago yesterday I guess it was and they had a discussion about it
and they recommended to this Council that we look at one of the first level scenarios,
either local or commuter as our next step up from where we are now. They did
recommend -- well, I explained to them one of the options is do nothing and that's based
on exactly what they said, this does have to come out of our General Fund and that
means it's going to compete with the needs of the police department and the fire
department and the parks department. The ultimate decision would be this would come
forward as an enhancement for the budget and it would have to go through the
departments' enhancement discussion if we so moved on -- or move forward with it.
Personally to me the right way to fund it is the regional public transportation authority
ought to be a taxing district. The school district, the library district, mosquito abatement
district, the highway district, all have their own taxing authority. In the 15 or 16 years
that our regional public transportation authority has existed the legislature has not seen
fit to give them authority. That's not likely to happen fairly soon. Second is -- as the
Mayor said, if we had our own roadway and transportation department that is where this
discussion would be. Probably under Public Works. How are we going to fund it within
Public Works as a part of our transportation responsibility. Again, we don't have that
responsibility, somebody else does, and it is legitimate to discuss with ACHD. The
current chairman as of a month or so ago of ACHD is also on the board of Valley
Regional Transit and very enthusiastic about it. We believe two -- two new ACHD
commissioners are interested as well. They understand the connection between
moving traffic single occupancy vehicle kind of traffic into buses and at some point that
may save them money in not having to add lanes or certain things they have to do.
They understand that connection. That, however, is not a huge possibility, because
they are spending all the money have on pavement and as we know, even when we try
to partner with them on landscaped medians and lights, they say, okay, our
responsibility is pavement, we don't have any money for anything else. So, even
though I think that's the right second choice, we area getting down to our third choice,
which is us and our General Fund if this is ever going to happen. So, I think part of the
discussion is -- and in fairness to VRT and the ladies standing here and the other
people that have been on the committee, this is similar to when many of our own
departments come and say here is what we are thinking, should we proceed with this.
The next step in this would be an enhancement and if the decision of this Council is let's
look at one of these scenarios and we know what the cost of each different choice is,
then, that will come forward as an enhancement and because of the long lead time on
getting buses that needs to be the 2015 budget we are talking about, even if we are
going to have service two years from now. So, in -- as I say, the Meridian
Transportation Commission said do, go ahead, pick one of the number one scenarios,
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either local or commuter, and I think they leaned toward the commuter one as our next
step. So, you obviously all know that I'm supportive of public transportation. The way I
put it, I don't think anybody is against it, but we all understand that this is a choice that if
we are going to start providing this service, there is probably something else we are not
going to do and -- and we all have to have our conscience work on that and we also
know that it needs to go through the enhancement process, but I think at this point, in all
fairness to Valley Regional Transit, if it's a no go, never, we need to tell them that now,
the same as we would one of our departments, say, no, don't go that direction anymore.
Or if this is a possibility, as I say, they are putting quite a bit of resources into figuring
out what our service would be if we had it and, fortunately, it's a turn key kind of thing.
We come up with the money, we hand it to them and they do the whole thing. It doesn't
require any staff on our part, it doesn't require really any effort on our part, other than
are participation on the board and I know Boise stays very close to VRT because of the
size of their contribution and we certainly would work closely as well, but it is a turn key
operation. They are the authority and they would run it, we would just help fund it. So,
I'm just kind of framing the discussion. The Mayor was right, that we need to compare
this to what else would we do with the money, but also consider, even though we can't
quantify it, this is a service that our citizens have been asking for and at the moment
there is no other way to fund it than our General Fund, so I have had my -- I said my
peace.
Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Excuse me, Mr. Bird. So, after all that, David, what's your preference,
because that's kind of where we want to be is give some guidance. Do we move
forward and if we move forward which one or if we don't move forward.
Zaremba: You know, this is a personal opinion, but I think we would get the most bang
for our buck in the number one commuter scenario. If you want to make sure that -- that
our next step involves seeing buses full, the commuter service is the one that's going to
fill the buses a few hours a day in the morning, a few hours a day in the evening. The
local service they are calling it, or the coverage service that would be similar to the
Saturday service probably would not have quite the ridership for the first couple of
years. Even though it would be nice if we could do all of them, because they feed on
each other. That was a very good point, that, you know, if you could do them all. If it's
the decision that -- that instead of jumping into this whole hog, we need to take one
more step, I would lean towards the commuter -- one scenario commuter as probably
being the most productive.
Rountree: Okay.
Zaremba: Personal opinion.
Rountree: Okay. Mr. Bird.
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Bird: My biggest concern is -- is -- and when they get back, the cost per rider on the
deal. I -- you know, my -- this is strictly my personal opinion. I'd like to see it, but I think
-- I think this valley is about half the size that it takes to have good public transportation
and I think we -- we come from a rural setting that we are used to having cars. You go
to the bigger cities and stuff, some of them people have never owned a car, nor do they
have driver's licenses. They know nothing but public transportation. We -- we sit in a
valley that cars is our number one transportation. I'd like to see some -- I'd like to see
that change. As Council Woman Milam said, it would be nice to get vehicles off the
road and get them into that, but I -- I would have a hard time if I -- if my math is even
close, what you give me is 15,000 a year per rider. I have a hard time telling my voters
that, so I would -- once you get that back I would go -- I just -- I just have a hard time --
and this Saturday bus has not been really successful and I -- and for the first year we
didn't expect it to. Now, it's taken ACHD, their Commuteride, it's taken them quite a few
years to build up to what they got going now. I mean I can remember when two or three
vans were leaving Meridian. Now there is a whole bunch of them and so I -- if we were
to go -- I'm like Councilman Zaremba, I'd go with the number two, the commuter deal,
but I have got to see more facts and figures and costs before I can jump in it with both
feet.
Milam: Mr. President?
Rountree: So, Keith, were those vans horse drawn or --
Bird: No. They had an engine on them.
Rountree: Thank you, Keith.
Milam: So, in response to Councilman Bird's comments, what they had said about the
-- the number that they gave us for Nampa was the entire Nampa --
Jalbert: Correct.
Milam: -- cost. That included their local transportation. So, what I would like -- at best
case scenario, every full buses. What is it -- what does it cost per rider full buses, so we
at least know what we -- what the potential of what we are dealing with is and I agree
that if the commuter bus -- the commuter bus would show up a lot faster. As local route,
you know, maybe down the road, but I don't know -- you know, sorry if my message isn't
picking on me because it's Saturday, but I think that a commuter bus would probably fill
up at some point, so those are the numbers that I would like to see and, then, I guess
we need to compare those to what it would be that he is adding more commuter ride
type vans. I mean what is the cost difference? If we are going to paying for this out of
-- out of our taxpayer pockets, you know, we need to do what makes the -- what has the
most fiscal responsibility for what -- for the decision that we make.
De Weerd: Okay.
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Jalbert: So, I think right now that the City of Meridian doesn't -- unless they have their
own, you know, theater advance, but they probably don't support that. That is typically
paid for by the rider and, then, a lot of employers like the base and stuff like that were
subsidized those vans and stuff, but we will definitely work if ACHD ride, you know, in
Kuna and trying to enhance existing services and such and we definitely will work with
them on the -- in this area as well.
Milam: Mr. President, follow up real quick. Sorry. So, the numbers that you gave us --
Jalbert: Uh-huh.
Milam: -- that there is a government subsidy
Jalbert: So, with Commuteride vans they are paid for by their riders and some
governmental entities will subsidize the rider's cost.
Milam: Sorry. I'm talking about on the bus.
Jalbert: Okay. So, the -- any capital participation -- for using FTA funds is an 80/20
match, so it's 80 percent federal and 20 percent local.
Milam: The numbers that we are seeing that --
Jalbert: That is not subsidized, because that would be an operating lease and they will
not subsidize that. So, if we currently propose that if we started a service it would start
in FY -17, which would be in August of 2016. So, in order for us to get buses, you know,
we would need confirmation that Meridian wants to move forward, so once we got that,
then, we would have to take a look at the transportation improvement plan and our
capital program or projects and just when we could order those buses. So, that's why
the cost that you see include the operating lease, which is 60,000 dollars per vehicle.
Cavener: Maybe a couple questions before maybe I share my point of view. You
mentioned Boise is hoping to fund a route on Fairview.
Jalbert: They are -- there is a route on Fairview and they are extending the hours until
9:00 o'clock.
Cavener: Extending the hours, but extending the length of the route.
Jalbert: Correct.
Cavener: Where does that route end at currently? I'm sorry to put you on the spot.
Havey: Oh, no. I know the routes very well. So, that one goes from downtown to --
and it kind of has some coverage of the neighborhood up on the bench and, then, it
goes -- ends at the Town Square Mall. We have talked to the city and also with the
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Meridian transit planning committee about modifying that so it comes all the way out to
The Village.
Cavener: A couple other questions.
Rountree: Sure.
Cavener: The one you were talking to with Kuna about
Havey: Uh-huh.
Cavener: -- that would bring them from middle of Kuna to
Havey: So, it was proposed that it would come from downtown Kuna and it would likely
meet up with the 40 and the 42. They have opted at this time not to move forward with
that, but would like to look at it, except that Simplot plant coming in and we are going to
be working with them on that.
Cavener: So, 40 and 42 are the buses that are typically full, though, when they get to
Meridian?
Havey: Correct.
Cavener: Okay. Here is my perspective. I think public transportation is important
because I'm a driver. Because I want less traffic on the road. I'm one of those rural
people that I'm tied to my car. Now, it's an electric car, so I don't put out too many
emissions, but nevertheless I support public transportation for one of those reasons.
My challenge is is that I think we are all in agreement the fun bus, for whatever reason,
was not something that we are putting our gold star on and saying we are proud of that,
that is -- that is the benchmark. The challenge is for me is to say, well, we need to
spend more money and we need to expand it further and that's -- that's the hardest pill
to swallow at the expense of police vehicles or a fire truck, things that are vital and
important. So, for me to continue with what -- because I think you probably heard here
at the table, getting us some more specific figures for what we can expect to pay per
rider, you guys are the subject matter experts for me makes it a lot easier to digest.
Havey: Okay.
Cavener: Because I don't mind spending the money if they are full buses. The
challenge is a year from now that the discussion is we need to -- or two years from now
we need to expand things further, because those buses still aren't being used and that's
to me like -- I don't want to go down that rat hole any further than we have to.
Havey: Okay.
Cavener: Now you can turn my mike off.
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Rountree: Let me throw in a few comments to sum up. I think what I'm hearing is that
folks need a little bit more information.
Jalbert: Okay.
Rountree: I'm pretty sure they are not going to like what they see. But that's okay.
They need to see it. As far as moving forward, my inclination it is the number one
commuter and I say that, because that's really the only place where you have some firm
information that could tell us what we would expect or could expect in terms of ridership,
because of what's happening on the two current commuter lines. So, I think you could
probably develop some kind of. a projection and I know it's crystal ball, but you're still
there. You know the number of trips and, again, it's not necessarily the ridership
number, but it's the trip number that's important to me. I would like to see you explore
that and get some numbers with respect to trips -- cost per trip and I think with this
particular line and with this formula you have got here costwise, that's with us being in
the Boise urbanized area and it's not the advantage we have now with the two routes
being able to piggy back off of Nampa's split, because they do get some operating
money because of their status, as opposed to Boise and I think we have taken
advantage of that.
Jalbert: Right. I do believe so. Yes. Let us double check that, but it's typically what is
operated in a large urban area versus a small urban --
Havey: The inter -county routes.
Rountree: The inter -county thing kind of -- that's how we made it work early --
Jalbert: Yeah.
Rountree: -- to be quite honest with you. But I would say let's look at that. I would say
I'm not real optimistic that that's something we are going to go forward with given what I
have heard. I just would remind the Council that if that's something we want to pursue,
then, we need to pursue some other areas that we don't want to pursue.
Bird: That we don't want to.
Rountree: Because it's got to come from somewhere and I don't see additional
increases in taxes to support it at this point in time.
Jalbert: Okay.
Rountree: But it's not that it isn't there, though, but something would have to go.
Appreciate your time, Rhonda. I know you don't have a darn thing to do and same to
your, Margaret. But I do have a final question. How is the transit center coming?
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Jalbert: It's coming along --
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Jalbert: Oh.
Rountree: Let her answer or do you --
Zaremba: Yeah. No. Go first.
Jalbert: It's coming along quite well. It's -- it's down to grade where it needs to be and
they are pouring the base for the ramp and they have got the decking in Main Street
and stuff, so we are hoping that by the end of March that there will be a second lane
open on Main is what we are anticipating.
Rountree: Great.
Jalbert: Now, I know everybody says June. We are probably going to open in August
of 2016 and we are actually going to paint out the interior down there at our Orchard
facility in outline so our drivers can practice ahead of time, so that they are not so
nervous driving down in there, so --
Rountree: Thank you. They will have that practice range for some of the public as well.
Jalbert: Yeah.
Bird: Just make sure you mark it --
Rountree: David, you had a comment?
Zaremba: Yes, Mr. President. My question was are we interested enough to challenge
them to come back maybe two weeks from now and fill in the rest of the information?
I'm thinking our meeting of the 24th maybe. One, Rhonda and Margaret, is that
possible and, two, Council, are we interested enough to have them do that?
Rountree: My preference would be that they come back a month from now.
Zaremba: At a workshop?
Rountree: At a workshop.
Zaremba: Okay.
Rountree: And that would be soon enough to factor in what it is we want to do with
respect to the budget or not.
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Bird: Where do you want to take it from.
Rountree: It would give you some time to not rush through it and think about what you
heard and --
Jalbert: Okay.
Rountree: -- what kind of approaches you might be able to present.
Jalbert: That sounds great.
Zaremba: So, that would also be on the 10th of March --
Jalbert: Okay.
Zaremba: -- at 3:00, if that's possible.
Rountree: That way you don't have to spend too much evening hours with us.
Jalbert: Yeah. I probably -- actually, can we do it the meeting before, because both
Kelly and I will be out --
Bird: Sure.
Jalbert: -- so if we could either do it --
Rountree: The 3rd?
Jalbert: Yeah. March 3rd.
Zaremba: That would be an evening meeting, 6:00 o'clock.
Jabert: It's an evening. Okay.
Zaremba: Yeah.
Jalbert: All right. Well, thank you very much.
Bird: Thank you.
Rountree: Thank you.
Zaremba: Than you very much. You put a lot of work into this. Thank you.
Item 7: Items Moved From Consent Agenda
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Item 8: Continued Department Reports
A. Police Department: Update on Public Safety Training Center
Construction and Police Department Remodel
Rountree: Next item on the agenda is the police department. Jamie.
Leslie: Jaycee, do you have my presentation? There we go. Caleb got it. Thank you,
sir. Chief Niemeyer told me to keep this less than an hour, so I will try to keep that --
actually, it should be really, really quick. I was listening to Warren's presentation and
not being involved in a building project before, talk about change orders and the
process and I found a new found respect for that whole entire process and didn't realize
how -- how much of that was going to be entailed in this project when I started it, so we
are going to get right into this and get you guys onto your next item. I would like to
show that picture, because that's what it's going to look like some day. We are getting a
lot closer. The bricks are all on. The roof will be on this week. Most of the curb is in --
curb and gutter. We don't have any asphalt in yet. There is still some ground work to
do. The snow kept us from that. Here is a before and after picture. Bottom left-hand
corner right when we started moving dirt and, then, the upper right is last week, we took
that picture from the roof. All of the construction as far as the building goes, as far as
any structures that we had to build are all in place. The lobby is covered. The concrete
in on. The inner structures for the lobby -- ceiling structures are almost all in place.
They will be in place this week. I got a couple pictures to show you that. We will get to
the important stuff, the budget numbers and where we are at as of to date. So,
currently we are about 59 percent complete on the whole project. As it sits right now, if
we continue on the path that we are on, we should be able to finish the project at
around $5,087,552.68. 1 always go all the way to the penny, so not guestimating. I
have been caught doing that before.
Rountree: We will hold you to that.
Leslie: Yeah. I know.
Bird: Don't forget that 32 cents.
Leslie: Correct. Sixty-eight cents. So, right now, as long as everything stays on track
and there is no more change orders that we have in the process -- which I anticipate
there will be some, but I don't think there is going to be any -- any major ones.
Everything that is underground is in. The lobby was a main concern for us when we
opened up those walls and not knowing what -- what we were going to find in there.
The as-builts for our building weren't always accurate. We did have a few surprises,
though. There was some 24 inch pipe in some of the walls that weren't supposed to be
there. So, we had to determine whether or not we were going to remove them and put
them in a different location or simply walk around them. We are going to walk around
them. We put the sheetrock back in place around them and created a cubby hole for a
printer and it worked out really well. It was a huge pipe. I don't know how it got where it
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was at. It should not have been there, but everybody was like I don't know where this
came from. So, we did have that problem. We got caught by the weather a little bit.
The snow got us about a week and a half before we were ready for it, so we had to wait
for that to get off of the roof before we could put the roofing material on. That's all on
now. We are hoping to be water tight. Councilman Milam was in the other day looking
at the water we had in there. We had some water standing, we had to take care of that.
It's almost dry now and, like I said, the roof will be complete this week. Any questions
on those numbers right there? I like looking at those, because they look pretty good
right now, but we will see how they look in --
Milam: Looking good, Jamie.
Leslie: Yeah. The project right now is anticipated to have completion is July 22nd. As
long as everything stays on track we should be done there and ready to occupy. We
have occupied -- the detective remodel area is complete. Detectives, both impact team
and the general investigators are located in their new office space. Our CAU unit is in
their new space. Our code enforcement, crime prevention and our front clerks are all in
their temporary spaces right now waiting this phase of the construction of the lobby to
get them back where they are supposed to be. Just a couple quick pictures. That's the
lobby destruction. We had to put five pillars in there. Cut some holes in the concrete
and pour some new foundations. That's the roof structure as of today. We are going to
put in a new lower ceiling. And that's above it. That process was an interesting process
for me. They brought in a pumper truck, took out a couple of the windows, and they
poured that floor in 40 minutes. I think that was pretty impressive, the guys show up at
6:00 o'clock and be out of there by 7:00, loaded up and out the door. That's the patrol
expansion. That's the 2,100 square feet that's on the west portion of our building. It will
house three offices and the new briefing area. It has the metal on it now in the doors.
That picture is from last week. Maybe the week before the concrete was actually there.
And that's the training center from the front. All the structures are in place. All the
bricks in place. All the windows, with the exception of the ones on the top around the
lobby section are in place. The steel structure or the frames for those windows went in
today and we are waiting for the glass which should be this week as well and, then, we
will be pretty much weather tight. Scenario village I am excited to talk about. We have
partnered with West Ada Technical School and we did that last year and we started with
the conceptual plan with the architectural students where they -- they designed the
scenario village for us and what it would look like and so we took those plans that the
kids had last year and we met with the class again this year -- and I say we, I'm talking
about -- Brenda Sherwood was with me. Brent and Bruce from planning went with us
and we met with the kids and talked about city codes and building codes and the
process of submitting plans through the city and we treated it kind of like an RFP
process where we created an RFP as if we were a customer looking for them to design
these villages for us and so the students are working in groups to design each of the
props and so this year they have narrowed it down to two props. One is a convenience
store and one is a restaurant and so the kids are either working on one or the other in
their groups and they are giving presentations and a couple of weeks ago we were at
the school and they presented their initial designs and we went as a customer around
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and talked about the pros and cons of the plans, what we liked about it, the cost
concerns we had with their design. Some of them we pretty elaborate. They need to
bring that back down to something a little more realistic. Bruce and Brent went through
and picked apart the planning obstacles, the code requirements, not having an exit.
There was a couple that didn't have rear exists to the properties and they talked about
those and talked about the codes. Spent a lot of time working with the kids. Our goal is
to choose one of each of those props at the conclusion of this school year, so that we
can move forward on funding it through donations. Brenda has been helping with that.
And, then, our goal is the students that were here last week, the red coats, the USA
kids, would be the ones that we would be handing that project off in the fall of '15. So,
as soon as the training center is complete we can then go right into the -- the training
center, scenario village. Scenario village is designed like a residential neighborhood
that's being developed with curbs, gutter, and streets are going to be in there. All they
need to do is, then, put in the actual props for the residents on site -- on each one of
those. So, that's been a lot of fun. The kids have been a blast to work with and they
are a lot more thorough than I anticipated when it comes to even going into the depths
of the codes and the building materials. They came out and did a test session with
Sergeant Strolberg and they took our training tools, weapons, and we shot them into or
used them on different types of building materials, so that they could go back and figure
out what kind of building material would be best used in our -- in our props, so that we
could -- they would be dependable, usable and easy to clean and maintain and so they
took some of that data back and are going to incorporate that into their plan, so it was a
good experience. They did a job site tour, took pictures, and the class prior actually did
soil samples and all that type of stuff, so it's been a lot of fun working with the kids. Any
questions I could answer on the training center or -- I welcome all of you to come and
walk through it. We are getting quite a ways along.
Milam: Mr. President?
Rountree: Genesis.
Milam: Jamie, I really appreciated the tour that you gave me. It's an amazing project.
A lot going on over there. But it seemed like you had moved some -- maybe
departments that you hadn't anticipated.
Leslie: Yeah.
Milam: Did you run into some obstacles or --
Leslie: A little bit. So, in the initial design when we went through and did the study of
the space and analysis and condensing our employees, taking it from a large work
space desk to cubicle spaces -- to a six by seven standard cubical and where we were
going to locate people. For example, the code enforcement personnel, in their section,
which is the west wing of the police department -- and if you recall in 2002 -- you may
not, but in 2002 that wing was completely empty and we didn't have a lot of the divisions
that's in the department that we have had. We didn't have near the personnel that we
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have. We didn't even have code working in the police department at the time. Well, we
designed originally in our conceptual designs of how are we going to locate people and
where are we going to put them. We were going to leave them in place and utilize
some furniture that we currently have, some big desks, big open space until they moved
into it, with a great vision of knowing that we can condense that and put it into cubicle
space. One of the things we realized when we moved in downstairs in the temporary
work location is the improved functionality they had working hand in hand with patrol.
So, then, we tried to figure out a way that we could adapt that and relocate them
downstairs in the spaces that we had. We were vacating the briefing room, which is
about 700 square feet and we were going to use that for future expansion for office
space. It's a perfect size for that unit today and will even fit one more in it in the future.
Which is probably where they will go to is maybe one more, two more, in the near
future. And, then, their supervisor working hand in hand with patrol versus upstairs --
because a lot of those code violations that we were responding to where there is towing
vehicles, weed violations, sign violations, a lot of those are hand in hand -- parking
violations our patrol slash code. So, now in hindsight I wish I would have thought more
about that and planned a little better to put them upstairs -- or put them downstairs,
keep that space that they are going to have open and use it for detectives in the future.
Our detective unit, you know, we -- even with our expansion we can gain -- we have
three or four more open spaces now that everybody is consolidated in one space and
that's pretty good, but five years from now that's not going to be good and so we -- I
would like to leave that space empty and now figure out a way to furnish the briefing
room appropriately, because the desks won't work, they are too big, and put them
downstairs in briefing and our victim -witness coordination was also going to stay in the
code and they work better with detectives, instead of leaving them in that space and
using their existing furniture, putting them in conjunction with the detectives. So, looking
at that and trying to figure out the cost and how to move forward on that, it's probably
another 20,000 dollars in furniture in order to get me to that point today, but it's one of
those things I wish I would have thought about early on. But for the most part I think
things are going really well and we are seeing those gains that we thought we were
going to get.
Milam: You're under budget quite a bit anyway, so --
Leslie: We are right now. You know, for the time it's good. It would have been better if
I would have -- we talked about that a little bit at the beginning is not doing the remodel
stuff until the end, get all the general construction stuff up. When we were looking at
our timelines on how we do business and the kind of slower period of time for our
customers coming in and out of the front door and how we could maximize that and so
we tried to do them both at the same time. So, having that project towards the end of
the project would have been a little bit better, because now we have seen the savings
that maybe we would have had if we would have utilized that money there. So, now we
are in a position that we are going to have to wait until that point, you know, to put that
furniture in place, maybe a few people in temporary spots until we figure that out.
Rountree: Other questions?
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February 10, 2015
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Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Jamie, first of all, don't beat yourself up, because as far as I'm concerned you
have -- you have done probably the greatest job this city has seen as far as putting a
building up, working with the contractors and I can speak for the contractor when they
feel the same way. You have -- you have been first class in getting everything done
right. and done on time and it's been strictly you that's --
Leslie: I don't know if I would agree with that.
Bird: And I know you have had help, but it's been you doing the leading and I certainly
appreciate it. One thing I will say, I don't come out during the day, I usually get out on
Saturdays by myself. One of the cleanest jobs I think I have ever been on and if you
would tell Robert that I would appreciate it. It's -- I think you could eat off the floors most
of the time.
Leslie: Councilman Bird, I appreciate the comments, but it's really been a team effort all
the way from the building department -- Max Jensen has helped me tremendously
through this process. A lot of it I didn't understand or didn't know. It's been a huge
learning curve for me. Roger Dennis is a -- has been great to work with and talk about
clean job sites, I have had several staff members come in and go, man, you should
have heard what he just said to that guy down there because there was dirt on the floor.
The lobby, when they took it apart -- it isn't like they took anything apart. I mean other
than the holes in the walls and the holes in the concrete it looks pretty much the same
way as when we had it before he walked in. So, he does keep a really clean job site
and his attention to detail and his ability to -- to track that entire project and know what's
going on has been -- it's made it easy for me to keep up with him.
Bird: Thank you very much.
Rountree: Other comments, questions? Thank you, Jamie
Leslie: Thank you, sir.
Rountree: Appreciate your work and hopefully it doesn't result in a career change
Leslie: No. I don't anticipate that.
B. City Council Liaison/Committee Updates
Rountree: The next item is City Council liaison updates, if you have any. Anybody want
to start? I will start I guess with what I have from the Mayor's office. Obviously, we are
in the throws of legislation this year. There is a number of things the city is tracking, but
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February 10, 2015
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the one that we are really most interested in is the annexation bill and the last I heard it
seems to have gained some traction. It got it introduced into committee. It's going to
have a hearing -- Bill, do you -- have you heard when the hearing is going to be on the
annexation bill? Is it next week?
Nary: Mr. President, Members of the Council, I haven't seen a date yet.
Rountree: Okay. It should be soon and everything we hear is as positive as you can
hear out of a legislature on that piece. So, look forward to seeing that in the near future,
at least some debate on it. All the other stuff that we are tracking are probably not of
great interest and things that probably aren't going to happen anyway. That's really all I
have to tell you about what's going on legislation wise. Anybody else have any thought
-- and I have handed off the SWAC to Genesis and it's been a good transition. They
have indicated, as well as Genesis, that it's -- it's a good combination and they all seem
to have a passion for -- for doing what they are doing and I have indicated that I would
stay engaged to some extent with them as well, because I have been doing it for, I don't
know, since they started. Anybody else?
Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I have got the parks first. The consultant that they had hired come in and had a
town hall meeting, plus a bunch of individual and group sessions. Covered all varieties
of ages and interests and everything. We will get a draft back here at sometime and
they will -- they will be back to do some more interviews and stuff. Mike tells me that
the dog park should proceed in three or four weeks, weather going. We do have eight
divisions of the contract already under contract, so it's up and ready to go. Finance
department, they have finally hired an employee to take Jennifer's place, who left last
month. Fiscal year '14 audit should be done in one or two weeks and presented to us
and, of course, Todd and Rita and Stacy are working on FY -16 budget.
Rountree: Very good.
Milam: Mr. President?
Rountree: Genesis.
Milam: So, you got a presentation from the Arts Commission and from SWAC and from
police today, so I guess I got off pretty easy. I do have Information Services as well and
IT Accella reconfiguration process that is being conducted is going very well. Originally
it was estimated to take about two years and now they think it will be done by January
2016. The FTEs that were added this budget year helped considerably to get this
project off and running and running smoothly. And clerks. Passports continue to stay
very busy. We are booked out about two weeks and we are heading into the busy
season for temporary use permits, so the clerks are getting geared up for that.
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Rountree: Very good. Thank you.
Cavener: Mr. President?
Milam: Oh, sorry. One more thing. Well, tomorrow is the police awards, so just
reminding all to show up. 6:30. Okay. Thanks.
Cavener: Sure? Done? Okay. Community Development. I really want to applaud that
department again. The presentation that we had last week from Pegasus was really
insightful and I think they have been great at getting us additional information. Excited
to see what transpires from all of that. In addition, I'm also liaison to HR and so Pat and
I had our second meeting and she's doing a very good job of getting me matriculated
into all things human resources and I realize that I would be a terrible HR director,
because of all the challenges that she encounters on a daily basis. Also the parks
commission, but they have not had a meeting since we last met, but I will continue to
keep you updated. On a side note, while not my liaison role, I became aware this last
weekend that Barb Hatch coordinated a group of our volunteers to go serve as
volunteers for the Boise city volunteer group and I think that's something that's real
incredible that -- so many things that -- we will never see that, but I wanted to let PD
know that I just think that's really incredible and I let Barb know and she's interested in
maybe having some form of an appreciation for our Meridian volunteers and that's
something that I'm willing to help explore as well. That's it.
Rountree: Good. David.
Zaremba: Mr. President, I have a lot I could say about the Legal Department, but it was
adequately covered by Bill. I have a lot I could say about the Public Works Department,
but it was adequately covered by Warren and the entire staff. I have a lot I could say
about VRT, but we had a presentation from them this evening as well. So, life is good
and I'm done for today.
Bird: You lucked out.
Rountree: I do have one final comment. Both VRT and COMPASS -- the city has two
seats on their boards. David and I are on VRT and the Mayor and myself are on
COMPASS. You all need to think about your interest in one or both of those and let me
know and probably talk to the Mayor about it as well, because there will be a spot on
both of those next year. And if you are, I would suggest you start coming just to see
what's going on. Maybe not every time, but sometimes and let me if you are and I will
get you the dates of the meetings. Okay?
Item 9: Future Meeting Topics
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February 10, 2015
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Rountree: Next item on the agenda is future meeting topics. That's my future meeting
topic. Anything else?
Bird: I have nothing.
Item 10: Executive Session Per Idaho State Code 67-2345 (1)(f)(a): (f) To
Consider and Advise Its Legal Representatives in Pending Litigation;
(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
Rountree: Item 10, Executive Session.
Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Yes, sir.
Bird: I move we go into Executive Session as per Idaho State Code 67-
2345(1)(a),(1)(c) and (1)(1).
Milam: Second.
Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to go into Executive Session. Roll call vote,
please.
Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Borton, absent; Milam, yea;
Cavener, yea.
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
EXECUTIVE SESSION. (6:21 p.m. to p.m.)
Rountree: All right. I need a motion to come --
Bird: Mr. President, I move we come out of Executive Session. No decisions made.
Milam: Second.
Cavener: Second.
Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to come out of Executive Session. All in
favor signify by aye.
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
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Rountree: I need a motion for adjournment.
Bird: So moved.
Milam: Second.
Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to adjourn. All in favor? Unanimous.
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT P.M.
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