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2019-11-19 Work SessionMeridian City Council Work Session November 19, 2019. A Meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 4:30 p.m., Tuesday, November 19, 2019, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd. Members Present: Tammy de Weerd, Joe Borton, Luke Cavener, Ty Palmer, Anne Little Roberts and Treg Bernt. Members Absent: Genesis Milam. Also Present: Chris Johnson, Bill Nary, Kyle Radek, Berle Stokes, Mark Niemeyer, Joe Bongiorno and Dean Willis. Item 1: Roll-call Attendance: Roll Call. A. Meridian City Council X__ Anne Little Roberts X_ _ _Joe Borton X__ Ty Palmer X__ Treg Bernt ______Genesis Milam __X___Lucas Cavener __X__ Mayor Tammy de Weerd De Weerd: Okay. Welcome to our City Council Work Session. Thank you for joining us. For the record it is Tuesday, November 19th. It's 4:30. We will start with roll call. Item 2: Adoption of Agenda De Weerd: Item 2 is adoption of the agenda. Borton: Hey, Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Hey, Mr. Borton. Borton: I move we adopt the agenda -- no. Hang on. Item 3-M of the Consent Agenda is -- has been removed by Mr. Nary and with that change I move we adopt the agenda. Cavener: Second. De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to adopt the agenda as changed All those in favor say aye. All ayes. MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. Item 3: Consent Agenda [Action Item] — Approved as Noted (See 3-M) Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda December 3, 2019 – Page 4 of 296 Meridian City Council November 19, 2019 Page 2 of 21 A. Approve Minutes of November 6, 2019 City Council Work Session B. Approve Minutes of November 6, 2019 City Council Regular Meeting C. Final Order for Entrata Farms No. 2 (H-2019-0113) by FIG Village at Parkside, LLC, Located at 3882 W. Franklin Rd. D. Final Order for Razzberry Point Villas (H-2019-0114) by Integrity Partners, LLC, Located at 1434 and 1492 E. Star Dr. E. Final Order for Shelburne East No. 1 (H-2019-0077) by Shelburne Properties, LLC, Located at 4080, 4115, and 205 E. Bott Ln. F. Final Order for Shelburne East No. 2 (H-2019-0078) by Shelburne Properties, LLC, Located at 4115 E. Bott Ln. G. Final Order for Shelburne East No. 3 (H-2019-0079) by Shelburne Properties, LLC, Located at 4330 and 4301 E. Bott Ln. H. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law for Ten Mile Plaza (H-2019- 0102) by Huston-Bugatsch Architects, Located at 3110 W. Quintale Dr. I. Development Agreement (H-2019-0060) for Creamline Park with Adler AB Owner IV, LLC (Owner/Developer), located at 48 & 71 N. W. 13th PL and 1220 & 1480 W. Franklin Rd J. Professional Services Agreement For Fabrication And Installation Of Meridian Fire Station No. 6 Artwork K. Stipulation to Resolve Protest and Withdrawal of Protest by Settlers Irrigation District Regarding Keith Bird Legacy Park L. Approval of Award of Bid and Construction Contract to Great Floors for the Fire Stations 1- 3 Flooring Replacement Project for a Not-To -Exceed Amount of $115,980.00 N. Approval of Purchase Order for 95 Replacement Body Cameras and 13 docks, plus Licensing and Auto Tagging to Axon Enterprise Inc. for the Not-to-Exceed amount of $90,352.00 for FY-20. O. Approval of Purchase Order #20-0120 for Fire Apparatus Repair Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda December 3, 2019 – Page 5 of 296 Meridian City Council November 19, 2019 Page 3 of 21 and Maintenance to Star Fire District Maintenance Division for the Not-to-Exceed amount of $100,000.00. P. Resolution 19-2176: A Resolution Of The Mayor And The City Council Of The City Of Meridian Reappointing Donna Lusignan To Seat 4 And Josh Evarts To Seat 5 Of The Meridian Historic Preservation Commission; And Providing An Effective Date. Q. AP Invoices for Payment - 11115119 - $72,638.59 R. AP Invoices for Payment - 11121119 - $4,112,047.34 S. Amended Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law for Millbrae Subdivision (H-2019-0066) by WHI Pacific, Located at 4888 and 4920 W. Cherry Ln. De Weerd: Item 3 is our Consent Agenda. Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Borton. Borton: Move we approve the Consent Agenda as amended. For the Mayor to sign and Clerk to attest. Cavener: Second. De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the Consent Agenda. If there is no discussion, Mr. Clerk, will you call roll. Roll call: Borton, yea; Milam, absent; Cavener, yea; Palmer, yea; Little Roberts, yea; Bernt, yea. De Weerd: All ayes. MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. Item 4: Items Moved From the Consent Agenda De Weerd: There were no items moved from the Consent Agenda. Item 5: Department/Commission Reports A. Fire Department Annual Update Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda December 3, 2019 – Page 6 of 296 Meridian City Council November 19, 2019 Page 4 of 21 De Weerd: So, we will jump right into Department Reports and start with the Fire Department's annual report update and welcome the chief to the podium. Niemeyer: Mayor, Council, good afternoon. I'm a little bit disappointed. I thought all the chairs were for us, but I do want to welcome the Boy Scouts. So, glad you're here. With that we will jump into our 2019 annual report, a look back and a look ahead. And Chris showed me how to work this thing. There we go. So, to start off with I want to introduce two new members to our team. The first would be J.D. Hendrick. He has already gotten a nickname, so I'm happy to share those with you after this for a small fee, but I didn't put them on here. He did accept the position of EMS division chief. J.D., you want to wave and say hello. This was a position that you as Council approved in our FY-20 budget. We are excited to have J.D. on board. As I explained to our -- our crews when I announced his acceptance, probably one of the best interviews in ten years I have ever heard. J.D. came well prepared and he's got a great vision for EMS. He's ready to rock. So, we are excited to have him on board. He began October 21 st. Some of those initial priorities that J.D. is going to be focusing on -- one is engaging with our local assisted living facilities here in Meridian. Our call volume has kind of gone up to those facilities. We are looking forward to J.D. going out, engaging with those -- those business owners, those assisted living facilities, to see if we can help educate and work together on decreasing call volume of those facilities. We are excited about that. Rescue Task Force, I will speak to this a little bit later, but this is something now, unfortunately, that the Fire Department and EMS personnel are involved in with active shooters. J .D. is going to head up our Rescue Task Force training and, then, also continue our great EMS department training, amongst the other day-to-day stuff that he is doing every day. We also kind of last minute just a recent hire collectively with the Police Department. I think you all know Stephany Galbreaith is our public safety PIO. She's loving the Fire Department. That's all I'm going to say. I won't rib the Police Department anything more than that. But we are happy to have Stephan y on board. Much needed. Thank you. Look at operations. This would be January 1st year to date. We -- we look at data as far as performance in a calendar year, not a fiscal year. That matches our dispatch center. That's when they start their data and that's how we analyze it. So, if we look at January 1st to today and we look at our emergent critical responses -- and those are defined as things like structure fires, cardiac arrest, stroke, heart attacks, extrication calls from car wrecks, we have had 629 critical responses year to date. Out of those -- and if you look at our chute time -- chute time, again, is defined as the time the bells go off in the station until the time we roll out the door. That for us is a big performance indicator of how receptive we are to the community and how quickly we respond to their needs. Our average right now is a minute four and our goal is a minute thirty. Our crews are doing an outstanding job getting the bell and getting out and so we are very proud of them for that. Our travel time goal to those 629 critical responses is four minutes and 37 seconds. That's our average. Our goal is five minutes or less. So, again, we are meeting our goal there. Very proud of that. If you look across all responses year to date, that would be our critical responses, our emergent responses and, then, our non-emergency responses. Right now we are at 5,051 total responses. I did this three times, because it struck me odd, but our chute time for all responses is a minute four. We ran that data set three different times and came up with the same answer. So, again, that is a testament to our Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda December 3, 2019 – Page 7 of 296 Meridian City Council November 19, 2019 Page 5 of 21 crews and their responsiveness to our community. The travel time average for all responses is five minutes and two seconds. De Weerd: Chief, is that an average? So, are all your stations hitting that same time? Niemeyer: That's -- that's an average across all -- De Weerd: I know. But do you look at that? Do you see a difference between stations? Niemeyer: We do. There is some variable station to station, depending on the crew configuration, whether they have a truck, an engine, what their apparatus are. We see some variable. We report that every month. Our battalion chiefs -- quarterly. I'm sorry. Every quarter to our battalion chiefs, so they can see the performance of their stations and their shift. De Weerd: Cool. Thanks. Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Borton. Borton: Kind of a nerdy question, but you could share data per station. Can you also share the median time per station? Niemeyer: The median time. Borton: As opposed to the average. Niemeyer: We haven't pulled medians that -- this is where the Mayor and I have had these conversations. The fire service is a little bit unique in that in our data set and performance across the nation we also looked at what's called a fractal response time and, really, that's saying how often do we hit this goal 90 percent of the time, 80 percent of the time, 70 percent of the time. We can capture that data. We have never looked at it from a mean perspective, taking in standard deviations and -- on both ends. But we do look at fractals and we also gauge that internally. Borton: You probably could though, you just haven't -- Niemeyer: I'm sure we could. Borton: Yeah. Niemeyer: Numbers. Borton: Okay. Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda December 3, 2019 – Page 8 of 296 Meridian City Council November 19, 2019 Page 6 of 21 Niemeyer: Yeah. Borton: Okay. Thanks. Niemeyer: So, a couple of other interesting graphs when it comes to operations and this one surprised me a little bit on the left and that's days of the week and calls for service . Typically in the fire department you will see a very low day and a very high day. We are pretty standard across the board that -- that Sunday low from a statistical standpoint, a data standpoint, is not enough to cause us to really open our eyes. So, across the board Sunday through Saturday we are fairly consistent in the amount of calls we are going on. If you look at the right side of the graph , this is very common in public safety. We ramp up about 7:00 o'clock in the morning. That's when everybody's going to work. Throughout the day we stay fairly consistent and, then, you see a pretty large spike at 5:00 o'clock at night. That's everybody going home from work and you can see that is higher than the 7:00 o'clock. People want to get home. They are a little bit more impatient. That's what we attribute that to. They come back, they eat dinner about 6:00 o'clock in the evening and, then, you see us go up again and kind of spike again at 8 :00 p.m. Truly what we have captured in that is a lot of folks go home, they eat dinner, and, then, they have medical emergencies after dinner and that's why you see that spike up about -- around 8:00 o'clock at night. We start to ramp down -- you can see that graph go from left to right down to midnight. You can see our low point throughout th at 24 hour shift as far as time of day is 4:00 o'clock in the morning. That's our lowest point. It makes sense to me. But we are still running calls at 4:00. On our prevention division, we have had 1,052 initial building inspections year to date. If you bring in our re-inspections, our complaint inspections, and even the firework inspections, the total is 2,908 total inspections by our prevention division. With those we found 1,410 violations. The most common being extinguisher maintenance and exit sign lighting not working. We have resolved 1 ,323 of those. A lot of the ones that were still unresolved are fairly recent that our prevention division is working through. Something that was very interesting for me -- we have been paying attention to this. This year to date we have had 131 plan reviews for solar panel installs on roofs. That's something -- solar has been around a long time, but our homeowners are starting to catch on, they are putting a lot of solar up on the roof to help with those energy costs. For us operationally what we looked at -- that presents a little bit of challenge. There are times when our truck company needs to go to the roof to cut a ventilation hole to let that fire and that heat, that smoke dissipate. So, having solar panels on a roof has been interesting. We have been working through that operationally with our crews. They are aware of them. They know how to mitigate them. Now we actually just had a fire -- Joe, help me out. About three weeks ago, I believe, where we had solar panels on the roof and we -- we worked through it. Bernt: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bernt. Bernt: Like how? You just like cut the panels or -- Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda December 3, 2019 – Page 9 of 296 Meridian City Council November 19, 2019 Page 7 of 21 Niemeyer: Yeah. We do. Yeah. We work with the solar manufacturers, the installers, to know how to cut those, how the power runs through those. We make sure that they put those just on one side of the roof if we can and only in a certain square footage , a pattern, so we still have access to the roof. But something new to us. De Weerd: So, chief, you work with the fire -- or with the building department as they get permits on placement? Niemeyer: I believe the answer is yes and I'm sure that Deputy Chief Bongiorno can answer that. Bongiorno: Madam Mayor, yes, we do. We are part of the workflow for solar panel installations. So, they will go through the building department and I'm in the approval chain for them and I review the plans to make sure that their panels are installed per the fire code. De Weerd: Thank you. Niemeyer: Also in prevention, Council, you're aware of Compliance Engine. That's a vendor that we work with specifically tracking inspection and maintenance of sprinkler systems, cooking hood systems, fire pumps, fire alarms. We just recently updated that agreement with Compliance Engine. For us it's a zero cost agreement. What happens is these folks go out and they do the inspection, they report to Compliance Engine, there is a cost to the -- the business. We updated that here recently. But we have had that agreement with Compliance Engine since 2015. The goal was to improve compliance with regards to maintenance and repair of these systems. Today we have had 1 ,969 submitted reports through Compliance Engine. I'm happy to say we are 93 percent compliant, which that -- what that means is the reports that have come in everything has been in compliance with the maintenance and inspection of those. If you compare that against 2016, one year after we started this, we were 78 percent compliant. So, what that means for us -- if these systems are working properly, quite honestly, it means less calls in the future for us. We are very happy with that. We do have a seven percent efficiency rate right now. That's a total of 138 reports submitted that are deficient. That's where our inspectors come in. They go out and visit the facility and work with that business owner to make sure we get up to compliance with those systems . And that is part of the cost recovery. I know Councilman Cavener -- had a lot of conversations about cost recovery. What does that look like. With the newest agreement with Compliance Engine the fire department, based on the work we do, with especially Chief Bongiorno managing this -- this program and, then, our inspectors also going out to do the re- inspections, cost recovery year-to-date has been about 5,000 dollars. And, then, lastly, our prevention division, 40 fires have been investigated. Our fire inspectors also are cross-disciplined in fire investigations and so we have gone out and investigated 40 fires. Our public education department -- they are not busy. Car seat inspections. We have had 167 car seat inspections year-to-date. Of those inspections we found 23 car seats that were not serviceable. Meaning they were unsafe. We have a grant program where a grant funds us to provide car seats when we find this. So , year-to-date we have Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda December 3, 2019 – Page 10 of 296 Meridian City Council November 19, 2019 Page 8 of 21 provided 23 car seats to those that came through and found that their car seats were unsafe. A story to that that happened this year. Folks came through, they were on their way to Mountain Home, they got a car seat inspection done. On their way to Mountain Home they rolled their car. That infant was safe. So, that tells me that it's worth it -- worth the time. Hands-only CPR classes. We have done 33 hands-only CPR classes, resulting in 2,166 -- 2,160 folks going through the hands-only CPR. We have had 331 safety classes. These are really our school education programs. That resulted in 27,230 little ones and adults going through those classes. I don't know who has the clicker for those, but somebody's clicking. We have visited 554 homes for smoke alarm problems. And , then, we have had 15 CPR first aid certification classes, in which 200 folks have been certified. These are typically people that work in daycares, child cares, lifeguards, et cetera. It's a lot. But beyond the numbers, the challenge that we have with prevention -- I have always been a prevention advocate. But the ch allenge is pulling numbers and data. We typically think -- think of things in reporting the data. The challenge with this is we don't know how many fires we have prevented. We don't know how many falls we have prevented. We don't know that. But we do have stories and I will tell two stories that we had happen this year. We had one student attend a safety class at school, learned about smoke detectors and how to evacuate a home. That student went home, talked to his mother and said we need to make sure our smoke alarms are working. So, they did that and a few weeks later they had a fire. Not only did the smoke alarms wake the family, but this student actually helped evacuate the mom and the grandmother from the home , because he knew what to do. Another really cool story, something that our pub ed division does. It's called a 911 simulator. So, they actually go out to the schools and they simulate a 911 call and they teach kids how to call 911. How to stay calm. Again, a student attended one of those. Later one of his best friends had a very serious medical problem . He called 911. We got there. We did our thing. Firefighters are talking to this kid and said, man, I can't believe you did that and he said it was a breeze. I learned this at school. That's cool stuff. That's the stories we can tell about fire prevention that the numbers maybe don't show. Very happy with that. Also looking at our performance , something that's very important to us that we have been doing for several years now, is citizen feedback. I have mentioned this before to you as Council. We have a survey function that we do to get feedback from our citizens. On the left there that's on our homepage of the website they can actually go and click the survey link and that takes them to the right side where they can fill out an operations survey, a prevention survey, a public education survey. Oftentimes in those surveys I see great comments coming through and this one that I haven't read actually came through today. Unsure of the exact date, but, unfortunately, the Meridian Fire Department has been out to my home many times over the past four years, as I have an elderly father -- elderly and ill father. They have always been courteous, respectful, and extremely helpful. That's the kind of feedback we are looking for as far as our department. If you look at the ratings that we have received over the last year, 151 operation surveys received, one hundred percent of those met the expectations of the community, 81 percent of those exceeded. In our prevention inspections we received 58 surveys to date. One hundred percent met the expectations and 77 percent exceeded. And in our public education division we receive d 71 surveys, one hundred percent of those met the expectation and 83 percent exceeded. All I can say is we have tremendous men and women in the Fire Department. I'm very proud of Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda December 3, 2019 – Page 11 of 296 Meridian City Council November 19, 2019 Page 9 of 21 those numbers, because, quite honestly, they are some of the most important numbers we can look at. I also want to mention real quick -- not only for Council, but for the community and those maybe watching. We have a tremendous outreach that we do, both through our website and through our Facebook page . We keep this very fresh. We keep it updated. Our Facebook page I think is second to none in the fire service anyway in Idaho. I don't know how to compare it to other departments in the city. I know that's a -- maybe a challenge that I'm throwing out there. But Judy and Christie do a tremendous job keeping these updated and I think for Council, for those of you that thought you could dance, you might want to go back to our Facebook page to check out Sparky. I'm just saying he offers lessons part time. So, if you need those let me know. Fire Station 6 update. I know Chief Butterfield's done a great job of getting you monthly updates with Fire Station 6. Went by there yesterday. It's looking great. Currently we are under budget and we are ahead of schedule. We hope to keep it that way. So , our possible grand opening is going to be pushed to late February or early March if things continue the way they are. We have talked about the components of this fire station, how it differs from our other fire stations. We are -- we are incorporating clean station standards, hard surface floors, isolated turnout rooms. That will be the way we go moving forward. And Station 6 design, that will be the future as we move forward as well. The outside might change a little bit, depending on where we put the next station, but certainly the interior -- we have a great plan and we anticipate using that in the future, the fire station designs, hopefully, to reduce a little bit of cost in that design phase. City strategic plan. The Fire Department's currently engaged in two tactics within 4.A.1 of the city's strategic plan. That entire 4.A.1 was looking at the environmental threats our city faces and, then, doing a THIRA. Target -- Target Hazard Identification Risk Assessment. And so we look at that. We worked with every department in the city to look at how they would view an environmental or natural disaster and how they would mitigate that. So , our tactic seven is to create an annual review and performance of systems and programs and, then, tactic eight is to use that review for an annual update to you as Council. This probably explains it a little bit better. These are two examples. The left side is the Fire Department. The right side is the Parks Department. We also did IT, Public Works, and the Police Department. We asked them to identify those risks. That's the first column is the item column. How often it would happen. That's the frequency column. The risk priority, is it high risk, medium risk, or low risk. And, then, the last column is do you currently have that issue fully mitigated or not. And so part of our review will be working with departments that said we don't yet have this fully mitigated , to work towards getting it fully mitigated. There may be areas that we can't fully mitigate and have to rely on others to help us through that. That is really what a THIRA is. And so that will be the update that we provide to Council every year on where we are at with regards to the natural and environmental risks. Our EMS JPA access, Ada County City Emergency Services System, not to be confused with ACEM. I know they are very similar. ACEM is the emergency management agreement we have with Ada county. ACCESS is our EMS system that we started years ago. Want to provide some highlights of the annual report that we did present to the JPA board last month, of which Mayor Tammy sits on and attended and heard the report. Our Meridian cost share as part of that agreement is 33,500 dollars. That includes cost for medical direction, which is a stadium F bureau mandate. QAQI, Quality Assurance Quality Improvement review of our -- of our reporting, which is, again, a state mandate. Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda December 3, 2019 – Page 12 of 296 Meridian City Council November 19, 2019 Page 10 of 21 Disposable medical supplies, those are the soft goods that we use on medical calls. Our RMS system is our database that we use to report fires and EMS incidents into. Again that's both a state requirement, as well as a federal requirement. And, then, it also helps pay for one paramedic or advanced life support shared training position. All of these things we would be doing on our own if we were not part of the EMS system and on our own those costs would be roughly in today's dollars 259,000 dollars. So, through this cooperative agreement and -- and collaboration we have saved ourselves roughly 225,000 dollars -- today's dollars. Some additional highlights. There was a joint RFP for cardiac monitors and AEDs done this year. We are now going to be s tandard with the use of our cardiac monitors and AEDs throughout the EMS system of Ada county. That RFP was done in partnership with all the agencies. J.D. Hendricks sat on that committee for our Fire Department. it was reviewed by our legal and our -- our purchasing. The end result is we are going to not only be standardized , but collectively we saved ourselves about 7,500 dollars on the cost of a cardiac monitor by doing it together and doing joint purchasing. So, purchasing in bulk matters. And we have come to realize that. We also did a joint Homeland Security grant for active shooter equipment. I mentioned active shooter earlier. It's sad to say that we are a part of that now, but we are -- but if we are going to play in that arena we want to make sure our folks are safe and they are equipped with the right tools. So, that included ballistic vests. It also included tactical medical equipment that when we team up with the police department and make entry into what they call the warm zone, we are fully prepared. Our portion of that grant for Meridian was 9,485 dollars through the Department of Homeland Security. Pulse Point engagement. I have talked about Pulse Point before. That's up eight percent. And, then, looking at our total incidents last year in -- in Meridian, 9,159 total incidents in Meridian, we responded as we reported in our annual report to 6,873 of those, which means 3,286, roughly, were handled by an ambulance only. Part of what we did when we put this together was said as a system what are we responding to and are we sending the right resource. Oftentimes our Fire Department was responding to noncritical calls that simply needed an ambulance transport. These are places like care facilities, urgent cares, homes where they are going to an appointment and all they need is an ambulance ride, they don't need a fire engine to respond and show up. So, we believe we found efficiencies by working under this system and eliminating some unnecessary responses. Another update -- our working out of class program. This was something that we agreed to in the last collective labor agreement. It's part of the 2018-20 CLA. Again, this is a voluntary program as we discussed when we went through negotiations . We want to provide an update on that. Currently we have one working out of class captain , who recently achieved that and we have one working out of class battalion chief that's on A shift, Chief Campbell's shift. That working out of class battalion chief covered seven shifts or 168 hours. If you look at that monetarily, you could say we saved 7,980 dollars. I put that in quotations. You have all sat in our boardroom, you have seen the staffing and how it plays out, so when you move folks up you know eventually we have a hole to fill. But the coverage of that in overtime would have been 7,980 dollars. We do have five engineers that have task books out that are planning to take their working out of class captain's test in December, so that will add to that list. And, then, we also have several engineers task books that are going to be started in the near future. Along with that we had a recent completion of the full engineer development program. Part of the requirement under the collective labor agreement that Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda December 3, 2019 – Page 13 of 296 Meridian City Council November 19, 2019 Page 11 of 21 we will have eight more people eligible. So, the program was a little slow to start, but it's gaining traction and doing well. We are very happy with this program. A couple of areas that were involved directly with the city and City Hall. One is our fire warden program. Two people from each department were volun-told they were going to be part of this and as part of that you get this really good looking lime green vest , you get a clipboard, you get a pen and a flashlight. De Weerd: People fight for the position. Niemeyer: They did. They fought for it. I had all kinds of people knocking down my door to come and be a part of it. Those two fire wardens are responsible to make sure the safe evacuation in the event of a fire alarm here at City Hall. Water-wastewater have their own plan in place. Parks maintenance has their own plan in place. So , we have gone through the education process. Those fire wardens have communicated with all their departments on where they go in the event of a fire alarm. So, if you happen to be visiting one of the departments when the fire alarm goes off , there will be a fire warden in that really nice green bright vest that will be telling you where to go once you get outside. Our next step in that is to drill it or exercise it to see how we do. I just can't tell you when. Bernt: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bernt. Bernt: Mr. Cavener. Council fire warden. Cavener: Madam Mayor -- De Weerd: Yeah, we need one during this -- Cavener: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Cavener. Cavener: For clarification, I get a vest and a flashlight? Niemeyer: And a clip board and a pen and a flashlight. That's a great deal. Cavener: A future action item. Madam Mayor, Council President Borton, happy to serve in that role. Niemeyer: The other -- the other area that we are heavily involved in is snow crisis planning. We got rid of the term Snowmageddon. We figured it had run its course. Knock on wood, cross our fingers we don't have that again. But we could have a snow crisis. This is beyond the day-to-day snow that we might get throughout the wintertime . In the event we get a large snow we do have a plan ready to be deployed. We have the folks ready and lined up to be a part of that leadership team that will make that happen. If Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda December 3, 2019 – Page 14 of 296 Meridian City Council November 19, 2019 Page 12 of 21 you're interested and if we do get it going, the command post or the command center is in fire admin, so you will see a lot of bodies in there making things happen. Fire Department FY-20 tactical work plan. We have moved away from long term strategic plans and gone to 12 month tactical work plans. We find in the Fire Department this works far better for us across the entire department as far as an understanding. We developed our priorities over three work sessions. The overarching priority for FY-20 is to make sure the things we are doing, the things we started are working and are institutionalized. Sometimes in business and we are a department unlike -- or like every other, you move fast enough and you may start something and move on to the next thing . We want to make sure we look back and -- at those programs and initiatives that we are working on that they are institutionalize. That encompasses 17 tactical priorities. I want to thank IT and Public Works. IT developed this tactical planning database where we can track our progress on those. You will see it's very similar to our city strategic plan and Public Works had developed a database like this. So, we want to thank both those departments for their help. Future fire station locations. Looking forward. I get this question a lot. When is the right time? When is the next one? How far into the future we are going to do X, Y and Z and it's -- it's pretty tough to produce, but in the conversation I had with Council President Borton said if all things were equal, what's ideally your best time to build a fire station. I said every five years. And the reason I said that is that building a fire station and everything that goes into it from ordering the fire engine, hiring the staff, doing the promotional process is a three year process in and of itself. Another two years would be ideal to allow our existing people time to devel op in their role and get ready for the next one. It's part of that -- that succession planning. We don't like being in crisis build. So, for us about every five years would be the ideal time to build a fire station. With that Station 7, using current data and current projections, it looks like Station 7 will be in the northwest corner of Meridian as that builds out with Owyhee high School, some of the developments there, along with the Chinden expansions. Station 8 is south Meridian. We have the land locked up for that. That ties in with the 77 acre regional park. We are working very closely with the Parks Department on that, how to get those roadways built out and get ready for that station to go in. And, then, Station One relocation at some point will be a conversation. Station One is in a pretty dangerous spot right now on Franklin Road. We have a number of safety concerns with that and it's slowing our -- our times out a little bit. So, those are the next three. Station 9 and 10. As this Council knows, our rural district is a great partner to the Fire Department. They typically go out and procure land ahead of anything that we think about as far as building. Station 9 and 10 will be in their purview down the road to find land for those . Those will be in the southwest corner of Meridian, especially as we grow out out there it's pretty -- pretty bare right now, but it's going to grow, like everything else. And, then, looking way forward -- and this definitely could and will change over time. We anticipate 11 to 12 fire stations will be full build out. We say that, because we have two areas looking at GIS, working with Dave Tiede, Matt Hoffman and his group up there. There are two areas that we simply cannot hit in fiv e minutes no matter how hard we try. One is Eagle and Fairview, right around The Village. The other one, believe it or not, is Meridian and Cherry Lane. Those are two areas that we simply can't hit in five minutes. So, if that becomes acceptable to us we won't need stations in those areas, but something to look forward to. Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda December 3, 2019 – Page 15 of 296 Meridian City Council November 19, 2019 Page 13 of 21 Bernt: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bernt. Bernt: Why can't you get to those? Just traffic? Niemeyer: Just traffic. The biggest piece -- if you just look at road miles you would say we should be able to get there in five minutes from either Station One or Station 3, but as we look at traffic those are the heavily -- heavily trafficked areas in our city and it's just really tough to get there. Bernt: There is -- follow up? There is some property over there, like Cherry Lane and Meridian, but where would -- I don't -- I'm trying to think like over there by The Village where we -- Niemeyer: Yeah. We are working pretty close with Con-Dev, so as -- as plans come in for new development, at least we put it as a placeholder that in this area we may need some land and so they are going to be paying attention to that as well. Yeah. Some upcoming needs as well that we will come back to you with. We have been watching our battalion chief workload for about 18 months now. As you know we have three battalion chiefs. Prior to our one working out of class battalion chief they were backfilling for each other. For us that becomes a safety concern. It's also become a -- kind of a work-life balance concern. In a year's worth of data from October 1 of '18 to October 1 of '19 they have worked an additional 1,197 hours collectively. It's a lot of hours. And, then, when you work that many extra hours the burnout starts to happen and safety issues come into play. We did not bring this up during the FY-20 budget discussions. The main reason for that was we didn't have qualified folks to -- to promote up to those positions. We do have a test coming up in April of this year, so we will keep you updated, but I did want to bring it to your attention as part of our update. This is a current challenge for us and probably a future need that we will have to discuss. And, then, lastly, Squad 31. I know this has been around a while. It used to be called the ARV program, for Councilman Cavener and the Mayor. Squad 31 is something that we are continually evaluating. The reason that we are evaluating -- the reason we even thought of it in the first place is to improve Station One's reliability. We talked about response times. Well, part of response times is how reliable is our current station. Meaning how often out of Station One and Truck 31 or Engine 31 handle a call within that area. Prior to Engine 36 going online our reliability was 68 percent. We like to keep it above 80, so we can make sure we are getting the calls in the right amount of time. With -- with Engine 36 being housed out of Station One, responding from Station One, it's given us a chance to look at how would that look, what would it do to our performance, would it improve it and that's gone up a little over 80 percent. So, it is a marked improvement. The squad is different from just adding another fire engine. That's historically what's been done in the Fire Department. We had another fire engine to a station. Squad is a two person apparatus. It costs -- new -- a new engine costs 560,000 dollars today. A squad we are looking at maybe 300 to 320 thousand dollars. Two people, as opposed to three. We just got done, ironically, completing an all day session of priority based budgeting where we had consultants coming in and talking Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda December 3, 2019 – Page 16 of 296 Meridian City Council November 19, 2019 Page 14 of 21 about what it is and how you, then, go to the next steps. One of the consultants was from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Is a financial analyst I believe her title was and as she was presenting priority based budgeting she used the example of squads in Albuquerque to help still provide great service to the community, but at a slightly lesser cost than you would typically do. So, this is a conversation that we will continue. We do have a committee working on the fine details of this. Seven members from the line, along with Chiefs Butterfield, Winkler and Hendrick. So, we might be bringing that back to you at some point in the future. And with that I would say overall the mantra in the Fire Department -- and I can speak on 91 -- on behalf of 91 employees we have, it's an honor to serve and it's a pleasure to serve and we understand we are a service and we do it really well. So, with that I would take any questions. De Weerd: Thank you, chief. Council, any questions? Little Roberts: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mrs. Little Roberts. Little Roberts: Madam Mayor and chief, no questions, just amazingly job well done and I have had the pleasure of being out a little more often in this last year to trainings and, then, a ride along and just never ceases to amaze me the customer service that we provide our citizens. But I am happy to hear that you are going to be checking into the assisted living issue, because when I was out with Chief Rountree our second call was -- we happened to be the closest to -- assisted living and so got to see how it could potentially be handled without a full engine. Niemeyer: Ye ah. Absolutely. Little Roberts: So, job well done to your entire team. Niemeyer: Thank you. Cavener: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Cavener. Cavener: Chief, a presentation I wish we had a full room for. I think it's important for citizens to hear this and you and your team at all levels just do a great job of being ambassadors of our community. My question -- it kind of goes back to -- in your first slide really kind of talking about responses and I'm just curious -- appreciate you sharing the -- the global number or the annual number of responses. Is that a sharp increase , slight decrease, flat in terms of -- of years past? I mean are we seeing more calls for critical service in Meridian or is it kind of in line with where you project them to be? Niemeyer: Our data is very consistent, about eight percent growth in call volume every year over the last five years. Ironically, if you look at the population increase, it's right Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda December 3, 2019 – Page 17 of 296 Meridian City Council November 19, 2019 Page 15 of 21 about in the ballpark of our population increase as I looked at those numbers. So, call volume increase tends to correlate to population increase for us. Cavener: Appreciate it. Thank you. De Weerd: Any further questions? Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Borton. Borton: One quick one. The concept of -- you stated relocation of Station One. For a future discussion. How -- how does that occur with the training tower behind it? Niemeyer: Yeah. We are analyzing all of that. Ideally one option, among many that we can explore, would be to keep that station and maintain it as a logistics center. One of our challenges as we grow is with the reserve apparatus that we have -- that we have to have, where do you house those, and where do you house them where we can maintain them, maintain the equipment on them. With Chief Winkler he would love to see us keep Fire Station One to house those reserve apparatus, so that he could keep a little bit of control over making sure they are ready to go and certainly we would maintain the tower. That -- that training tower is vital to our operation and our training. Borton: When we get to that -- Madam Mayor, when we get to that part of the discussion, whenever that occurs, it doesn't seem like relocation is maybe the right way to phrase it, right? It's really not relocating Station One, but you're still utilizing that property -- Niemeyer: Yeah. Borton: It's not -- Niemeyer: Absolutely. Borton: -- one for one. Okay. De Weerd: Well -- and I think Fire Station One is a backup to the emergency center at Barrister. Niemeyer: Not to Barrister. It's -- it's our city's specific emergency coordination center. Should we have a very specific Meridian event. The EOC at Barrister -- the backup to that is actually over at State Com over at ISP. Borton: Madam Mayor. One other question to the squad reference, kind of ARV part two. Did some part of that analysis presume that -- that by facilitating multiple units to be deployed from a single station for different purposes that that lowers the need for -- either Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda December 3, 2019 – Page 18 of 296 Meridian City Council November 19, 2019 Page 16 of 21 delays the need for future stations or allows future stations to be spread out further and are you able to capture with some big assumptions -- Niemeyer: Yeah. Borton: -- potential long-term cost savings that -- Niemeyer: I think that's part of the analysis. We certainly talk about that and as you all know the truck is housed out of Station One and the unique challenge with the truck -- it doesn't just go to calls within that district, it goes to calls in the entire city. So, looking at it, as the truck calls increase how does that affect, then, the secondary unit in taking those calls away from the truck if you will and how do we look at it long term. I think -- I believe -- and the next administration may differ, but I believe that a squad implementation to augment services long term as we look at how we deploy and how we build our stations is a good idea, because I think it can slightly delay the need for future fire stations if we have those more nimble resources on the road to go meet the demand. So, that the answer anecdotally is yes, but we want some data and some analysis to prove that with regards to your question about delays. Borton: Sure. I think that would be really helpful, because it -- if, you know, Station X is -- is presumed to be needed because we can't get to that area within an acceptable time, the addition of an ARV squad concept, if we ever got to that stage, seems to radically change those response times, which would then -- Niemeyer: It could. Borton: -- radically change the basis for adding a station in the first place, so -- Niemeyer: Yeah. Our biggest challenge -- and I think you and I have talked about this, Council President, the biggest challenge we have is geography; right? Distance. So, if we have a -- even a squad out of Station One and we are talking about calls in the southwest corner, for example, as we grow and build, the distance between point A and point B, even driving safely it's still beyond that five minute mark. So, it's all those things brought into -- that should we do an analysis of it. Borton: Okay. De Weerd: Thank you, chief. Niemeyer: Thank you. De Weerd: And thank you to the team. Nice job, Judy, on the PowerPoint. What? Wow. Chief. That is -- that's mind blowing. Bernt: I don't believe it. Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda December 3, 2019 – Page 19 of 296 Meridian City Council November 19, 2019 Page 17 of 21 B. Community Development: Budget Amendment in the Amount of 25,000 for Meridian Development Incentive-Verified First [Action Item] De Weerd: Good job. Good information. Thank you. Okay. Item 5-B is under Community Development and I think Tori is going to join us at the podium. Cleary: Good afternoon, Madam Mayor, Members of the City Council. The budget adjustment before you this afternoon is necessary due to the fact that the community match agreement between the city and Verified First was approved September 3rd after the fiscal year 2020 budget was adopted. The current annual budget allocation for Meridian development community match incentives is 75,000 dollars. There is an existing 50,000 dollar contractual obligation for a community match disbursement for ICOM and so the proposed 25,000 dollar budget adjustment is necessary in order to meet this year's contractual obligations with ICOM and Verified First, so -- and just FYI, any future necessary budget adjustments will be presented to the Council at the same time as a community match agreement. De Weerd: Thank you, Tori. Council, any questions? Thank you. Do I have a motion? Bernt: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bernt. Bernt: I move that we approve the budget amendment in the amount of 25 ,000 dollars for Meridian Development incentive, Verified First. Cavener: Second. De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve Item 5-B. Any discussion? Mr. Clerk, will you call roll. Roll call: Borton, yea; Milam, absent; Cavener, yea; Palmer, yea; Little Roberts, yea; Bernt, yea. De Weerd: All ayes. MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. C. Public Works: Budget Amendment in the Amount of $257, 778 for Ada County Highway District Utility Improvements on Meridian Road from Cherry Ln. to Ustick Rd. [Action Item] De Weerd: Item 5-C is also under Community Development and it looks like this is really under Public Works. Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda December 3, 2019 – Page 20 of 296 Meridian City Council November 19, 2019 Page 18 of 21 Radek: Madam Mayor, correct. De Weerd: Kyle, I know you didn't move to Community Development. Radek: Never. Madam Mayor, loyal to Public Works. De Weerd: That was smooth. Radek: Madam Mayor, this is a budget amendment in the amount of 257,778 dollars for the ACHD utility improvements in coordination with the ACHD project of Meridian Road, Cherry to Ustick, for FY-20. Five hundred and fifty thousand dollars was budgeted for water main extensions. That 550,000 dollars was shared by ten projects going on and this is one that was bid out in September -- September 25th and the -- the bid for the water portion of the utilities was significantly more than was estimated in the project. The total project bid actually was -- the estimate was 4.5 million and the total project bid out at 5.5 million. So, total project bid out high as well. The -- the city's water portion bid out significantly high percentage wise, quite a bit more, but I guess -- the only thing I can say about that is sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don't. Generally these projects end up -- the low bidder ends up being the low bidder for water and sewer also. This was just not the case. I guess I will stand for any questions. We are asking the Council to approve the Meridian utility budget amendment for 257,778 dollars and authorize the Mayor to sign the amendment. De Weerd: Thank you, Kyle. Council, any questions? Cavener: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Cavener. Cavener: Real quick, Kyle. So, if I understand correct, the low bidder for the project, costs related to sewer and water, was actually higher than some of the other bidders that were received, but we are obligated to go along with this, because it's a joint project; is that accurate? Radek: Madam Mayor, Council Member Cavener, that's correct. We do an ACHD co-op agreement that says the award is going to be based on the total low bid and sometimes we don't get a low bid as well and this is one of those cases. Cavener: Madam Mayor, follow up. Kyle, just out of curiosity, is this -- is it a high margin of difference between some of the other bidders, our portion, or is it within a five percent margin? Radek: Madam Mayor, Council Member Cavener, this -- this particular one was quite a bit higher. We are scratching our heads to figure out why, but in this case, yes, it was quite a bit higher than the other bids for water. Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda December 3, 2019 – Page 21 of 296 Meridian City Council November 19, 2019 Page 19 of 21 De Weerd: But weren't they lower -- a lower bid for ACHD? Maybe they are making up the difference. Cavener: Madam Mayor, you say that somewhat tongue in cheek, but I guess that is a concern, but I have a question for -- again Kyle -- and I apologize, you know, obviously, kind of -- we opened up a little bit of a rat's nest on this, but to legal, do we have other -- other options? I hate to think that we are spending more dollars on a project than what would come in if this was bid out individually. I recognize the benefit of -- of this joint project, I just -- Radek: Yeah. Madam Mayor, Council Member Cavener, I -- good question. Things that we ask ourselves, too -- Cavener: Sure. Radek: -- and I guess one -- one point of order is that, you know, once you are in a co- op agreement you are in a co-op agreement and it's kind of too late to back out if you -- if you -- if you say ACHD, you know, we are just not going to do this, then -- then you're going to end up with fire hydrants in the middle of the road and you can't have that; right? Could we -- could we -- could we do this separate from ACHD? Yes, we could do this separate from ACHD. We found that by and large doing a co-op project is much better and the track record is generally that the low bid for the project is usually the low bid or awful darn close to the low bid for water and sewer. So , this doesn't happen very often. Cavener: Madam Mayor, appreciate that. I think -- and as we always are improving our process, I guess I look at when we do a park we often have different contractors that bid on different pieces and I don't -- I don't know if there is an opportunity in the future with a co-op agreement to provide greater flexibility to the city to be a little more selective, if that is in our community's best interest I guess is the time again and if this is an anomaly -- don't love that, but nothing against departments -- the kind of the position that we are in and I just -- if we can explore some other options to give us greater flexibility for our ratepayers that would be my preference. De Weerd: Crystal ball. Mr. Nary, did you have any comments? Nary: No, Madam Mayor. I think Kyle's answered that that once you enter into that co- op agreement we have agreed to go forward with this project. So, at this point we really couldn't change that. Certainly we could look in the future, as Kyle suggested, but I think -- like you said, I think we found in the long run it has benefited the city greater than trying to do these projects separately from the other utilities. Cavener: Fair enough. Thank you, Madam Mayor. De Weerd: Thank you. If there is no further questions, do I have a motion? Little Roberts: Madam Mayor? Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda December 3, 2019 – Page 22 of 296 Meridian City Council November 19, 2019 Page 20 of 21 De Weerd: Mrs. Little Roberts. Little Roberts: Madam Mayor. I move that we approve the budget amendment in the amount of 257,778 for the Ada County Highway District utility improvements on Meridian Road. Bernt: Second. De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve Item 5-C. If there no discussion, Mr. Clerk, will you call roll. Roll call: Borton, yea; Milam, absent; Cavener, yea; Palmer, yea; Little Ro berts, yea; Bernt, yea. De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried. MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. D. Police Department: Budget Amendment in the Amount of $4,250 for Required Match of Office of Highway Safety Mini-Grant to Fund Education and Advertising for New Hands -Free Ordinance [Action Item] De Weerd: Item 5-D is under our Police Department. Stephany is here on a budget amendment for a grant that she sought and received. Welcome, Stephany. Galbreaith: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Council Members. This evening I am here to request a budget amendment in the amount of 4,250 dollars for the required match, which is 25 percent of a grant from Office of Highway Safety to help fund the education and advertising of the new hands-free ordinance. It's necessary because the ordinance is new within this fiscal year and so it's important that we educate and communicate the information to our citizens. Thank you, Chris, for pulling this up for me. Part of this Office of Highway Safety grant is a collaboration to develop a graphic that will be put on billboards throughout the city and as you enter into the city and, then, we also did a 30 second PSA I would like to show you. You might recognize a few of the people. Oh. There is sound. Hang on. (Video played.) Galbreaith: So, that PSA will run at The Village Cinemas for two months starting the 22nd of this month. Just to help continue that education process we want to make sure that our citizens are aware November and December are the busiest months for movies and so it's ideal that we kick that off and, then, the billboards are going to go through -- December through February based on locations. They vary. Digital, vinyl, et cetera. Yes. And so I stand for questions. Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda December 3, 2019 – Page 23 of 296 Meridian City Council November 19, 2019 Page 21 of 21 De Weerd: Thank you, Stephany. Yes. Well done. Any questions from Council? Okay. Galbreaith: Thank you. De Weerd: Thank you. If there is no questions, do I have a motion? Cavener: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Cavener. Cavener: I move that we approve the budget amendment for the amount of 4,250 dollars for the Office of Highway Safety mini -grant. Bernt: Second. De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve Item 5-D. If there is no discussion, Mr. Clerk, will you call roll. Roll call: Borton, yea; Milam, absent; Cavener, yea; Palmer, yea; Little Roberts, yea; Bernt, yea. De Weerd: All ayes. MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. De Weerd: We are at the end of our work session agenda. Do I have a motion to adjourn? Borton: I move we adjourn. Cavener: Second. De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to adjourn. All those in favor say aye. All ayes. MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. MEETING ADJOURNED AT 5:23 P.M. 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