Loading...
2021-02-16 Work Session Minutes Item#1. Meridian City Council Work Session February 16, 2021. A Meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 4:34 p.m., Tuesday, February 16, 2021, by Mayor Robert Simison. Members Present: Robert Simison, Joe Borton, Luke Cavener, Treg Bernt, Brad Hoaglun and Liz Strader. Members Absent: Jessica Perreault. Also present: Chris Johnson, Bill Nary, Caleb Hood, Mark Ford, Joe Bongiorno and Dean Willis. ROLL-CALL ATTENDANCE Liz Strader _X_ Joe Borton _X_ Brad Hoaglun _X_Treg Bernt Jessica Perreault _X Luke Cavener _X_ Mayor Robert E. Simison Simison: Council, I will call this meeting to order. For the record it is Tuesday, February 16th. 4:34 p.m. We will begin this afternoon's work session with roll call attendance. ADOPTION OF AGENDA Simison: Next item up is adoption of the agenda. Hoaglun: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Hoaglun. Hoaglun: I move adoption of the agenda as presented. Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Yes, sir. Cavener: For clarification, don't we need to remove an item from the Consent in order to continue? No? Johnson: Mr. Mayor, we would -- when you take Consent you can act on it at that time. Cavener: Mr. Mayor, I approve the motion then. Simison: I have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? If not, all in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed nay. The ayes have it. Page 5 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page 2 of— MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. CONSENT AGENDA [Action Item] 1. FedEx Shipping Center Re-Use Water Main Easement 2. Gander Creek South No. 1 Offsite Sanitary Sewer Easement No. 1 3. Final Plat for Delano No. 1 (FP-2021-0001) by Challenger Development, Inc., Generally Located West of N. Eagle Rd./SH-55 and South of E. Wainwright Dr. 4. Final Plat for Impressive East Ridge Subdivision No. 2 (FP-2021- 0002) by DevCo Development, LLC, Located North of E. Lake Hazel Rd. Between S. Locust Grove Rd. and S. Eagle Rd. 6. Final Order for Shelburne South No. 1 (MFP-2021-0001) by Kent Brown Planning Services, Located at 4425 S. Selatir Way and 4320 E. Amity Rd. 7. Second Addendum to Development Agreement Between the City of Meridian and C4 Land, LLC (Owner) and G20, LLC (Developer) for East Ridge MDA(2020-0096) (Inst.#2018-052339) and Termination of First Addendum (Inst.#2019-021791) 8. Construction Contract with Between City of Meridian and Titan Technologies for Chateau-Jericho Water and Sewer Main Replacement Project for a Not-to-Exceed Amount of $911,785.00 9. Interagency Mutual Aid and Memorandum of Agreement for Peace Officer Training Between the City of Meridian and the City of Nampa to Update Signatures of Authority 10. Resolution No. 21-2256: A Resolution Vacating the 20' Wide Landscape Easement Platted on the South Property of Lot 5, Block 3 of Olson and Bush Subdivision No. 2 in the City of Meridian, Ada County, State Of Idaho; and Providing an Effective Date Simison: Next item is the Consent Agenda. Hoaglun: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Hoaglun. Hoaglun: As Councilman Cavener was referencing, we would like to move Item 5 from the Consent Agenda and move that down for action later and I would, then, move approval Page 6 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page 3-— of the Consent Agenda as amended. Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: Appreciate the eloquency of Council Member Hoaglun and I will second that motion. Simison: I have a motion and a second to approve the Consent Agenda with No. 5 moved off. Is there any discussion? If not, all in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed nay. The ayes have it and the motion is agreed to. MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. ITEMS MOVED FROM THE CONSENT AGENDA [Action Item] 11. [Previously Item 5] Final Plat for Sky Mesa Commons No. 5 (FP-2020- 0021) by J-U-B Engineers, Inc., Generally Located West of S. Eagle Rd., Midway Between E. Taconic Dr. and E. Lake Hazel Rd. Simison: Next item is items moved from the Consent Agenda. Hoaglun: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Hoaglun. Hoaglun: Just a note of explanation. They are working on a landscaping plan. They did need an additional week to get that completed, so I would move that we just hold Item 5 to action on the Consent Agenda next week. Cavener: Second the motion, Mr. Mayor. Simison: I have a motion and a second to continue this item to next week. Is there any discussion? If not, all in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed nay. The ayes have it and the motion is continued. MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. DEPARTMENT / COMMISSION REPORTS [Action Item] 12. City Attorney's Office: Annual Report Simison: Next up is Item 12 under our Department/Commission Reports. This week it's the city attorney's office annual report and I will turn this over to Mr. Nary. Page 7 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page 4 of— Nary: All right. Mr. Mayor, Members of the Council, it's my privilege to be here today and give our annual update. I know you look forward to this all year. It's always enjoyable. will thank all of my team for being here. Ted's online and on YouTube. Michelle Albertson is here in the room. Emily and Andrea are both online at home. This has been a year like no other. I think we all agree and we have all heard that term enough. This is -- I have to thank Emily for the template here. She's the one that found this very COVID centric template for this presentation and it seemed very fitting for this particular year. Again, our mission statement -- you have seen -- how do I advance the slide here, Chris? Don't I just click it? Can we -- can we back up a couple? We are going the wrong way. There we go. Okay. There we go. Okay. So, here is our team. This is early on in COVID. This is us trying to meet online. So, again, our team is the same folks that you see. Ted. Emily. Andrea. Michelle. Myself. Council Woman Strader is our liaison for the second year. She drew the short straw two years in a row it appears. But this is us meeting from home. You can see everybody's got their home in the background and can see how that all looks for everyone. Again, unlike most any other experience I think any of us have ever seen. All right. Chris, this mouse is just not clicking. Johnson: Try just the right arrow on your keyboard. I wouldn't -- Nary: Oh, right arrow. Okay. I will do that. Okay. All right. Again, here is our mission statement. I added a little 2020 edition of COVID will not define us or detour us. One of the things that we felt was greatly important from our office this year was we weren't going to blame COVID for things. We are not going to blame COVID that we can't get things done or we can't get our work accomplished or we can't get deadlines met. That's not who we are. That's not who we are as a city. That's not who we are as a team. And so we didn't. We got all our work done. We got things done on time. We got our ordinances done. We got contracts done. Everything that makes the city function that we touched got done and we figured out how to do it and we had to figure it out pretty quickly in a much different way than we had ever done it before. So, I asked each of my team to tell us a little bit about what 2020 meant for them. How did it affect them. You know, both personally and professionally and what -- what was different about it and I included those slides in here and I won't read the whole thing. I did highlight a few things. Here Ted mentioned not only we talk regularly as a team on Teams and, then, we also get everything done and functioning. So, we still function as a team, even though we aren't all physically in the same place. I think recently Michelle and I were in the office a particular day and it happened that Ted came by for something and happened that Emily came by for something and it happened that Andrea came by to pick up something -- there was five of us here for the first time since last March. We just found a different way to function as a group and, again, it's a testament to all of my teammates and them wanting to make that work, wanting to make it function, making sure, again, the work can get done without a break. Again, looking forward to all of us being in the office together again soon. I think that is the goal of us, as well as many other of our teams around the city. So, what I did is we tried to highlight the things both what we do and the things over the last year that were very unusual for what we normally do and as you will see the list of that's pretty long. I don't want to make it seem like if we took off the unusual we don't have enough to do, because we have plenty of things to do. But if you look at some of Page 8 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page 5—— the things I tried to highlight, you know, again, we became experts and the state leaders, frankly, in this particular area of how to deal with this, how to get information out to the public, how to get information out to the employees, how to navigate through very confusing orders and very conflicting orders that we were getting and how to do things and when to do things and having to do those very rapidly and -- and in a very changing environment that all of you are aware of that was constantly readdressing it from the governor's office, Central District Health, local leaders in how -- what's the best thing for everybody and trying to figure it out literally on the fly. If I recall originally the Mayor had proposed early March as an experiment to try to see what it would be like to have to work remotely and, then, suddenly we had to work remotely. There was no experiment anymore, we were actually going to have to do this and to figure out how to take home desks, chairs, computers, printers, scanners, whatever we needed to do to make things function we had to figure it out in a very short time and a testament to both everybody in the city and especially IT in making things work and happen and it being pretty seamless for -- for most people in how things happened. But this was just some of the things that we did just for the Mayor's office, to the Council, for the commissions in trying to keep functionality of the city going. This was extremely unusual. This was the night we had the protest out front, which I think I'm actually -- myself and the custodians are the ones who actually saw it. It was on the news. Because we don't deal with the building. Chris is on the other side of the building, so he didn't even notice it was going on at the time, because he was in his office and I was up in mine. So, that, again, extremely unusual situation for the last year. So, again, what did 2020 mean? You know, the shutdown period we learned how to do our jobs differently, as Michelle stated here. The challenges have been something to I guess look at as a mild success. Obviously, there is nothing that could overcome the tragedy of 2020 for hundreds of thousands of people, but the workplace world shifted and we figured it out and -- and we still maintained our connectivity, we still maintained our ability to meet -- it would be efficient and -- and many of our folks -- and my team especially, but many throughout the city will say they found much more ways of being efficient working from home that we didn't imagine was really feasible a year and a half ago and now it's like it's very feasible for many people to do that, because there is less distraction, they can be very focused, they can be very directed because they don't have the -- the interruptions and the phone calls and people walking by and things like that. So, they are at home, they can be very focused. So, it can work at a work life balance for people and a lot of the functions of the city. Again, the clerk's office -- open meeting law compliance. Again, a completely new area to deal with. The governor gave us a little bit of relief on having in-person meetings with everybody for a period of time, but we still had to figure out how to do this. A testament to Chris and his office on making all of these functional platforms work and if you recall out of the entire year since -- since my last report we missed one meeting. One meeting we had to cancel because we couldn't get the Zoom and the YouTube and all that to work at the same time and that's it. I mean everything else got functioned and worked and things got held, we held hearings and things -- things happened. So, again, we had 664 public records responses. So, this, you know, is a growing rapid area that we are seeing. Now, again, the police reports, they get about 3,000 over there a year. These are just the ones that come through here. So, these are ones from -- through the clerk's office and -- and my folks -- my team, primarily Emily and Andrea, touch every one of those. Now, many of Page 9 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page 6 of— those might simply be, yep, you got it, send it, but many times it is much more complicated than that. We had one this year that's related to a lawsuit that ended up being I think a thousand dollars in fees of all the documents that had to be looked through before we could release it. It was hundreds and hundreds of hours of time for that. So, it really is becoming a very active, busy area for us. In Human Resources, as you can imagine, again, our -- our team is helping advise Human Resources in how to address all of these employees concerns and fears and what to do and when to do it and how to do it and so it was very much a time consuming exercise to make sure we try to get it right and try to do the right thing for everybody and try to provide them the best legal advice in an area that has very little legal -- you know, we are looking at a case law from a hundred years ago to figure out can we do that or not do that and, then, should we do that or not do that. So, again, very busy, very new, very exciting, very interesting, but a much different world that we were living in a year ago. One other thing we did that although I put it into the usual, but it was a lot of effort is the city policy handbook has been in a rewrite stage with HR and Legal for the last -- at least -- well, aggressively for the last year. Lots of time. Andrea has been the lead for us on that. Laura Lee from the HR department. Lots and lots of hours to get this work done and accomplished and we are nearly there. We had to do a rewrite of the veterans preference and Andrea worked with Gowan Field and the guard out there to make sure our policy on employee and veterans use of their time for our employees matched up with what the federal requirements are and how they get compensated and what time off they get and how that all works and we updated our policy to make sure we were on track with the federal government. Again a lot of time and effort to get that done and get it done right. Finance Department. Again, the CARES Act. CARES Act funding. How do we use it? Can we use it? What do we use it for? Lots of questions. Answers were sporadic at times. Inconsistent at times. Vague at times. Again, it was a lot of effort and time to try to, again, help Finance -- help Todd and the Finance Department deal with all of these and create policies very quickly on what we would use these for and how we could use it and -- and make the best use of taxpayer dollars that we really felt were necessary and because of the changes that we had due to COVID that we have to do. So, again, another new area of expertise for us. So, as you know-- we all know Emily and Emily had a lot to say. But it's -- all of it -- I didn't cut hardly anything. Emily doesn't like to be edited. Sorry, Emily. But also there wasn't really anything to edit. I'm, obviously, not going to read it all, but I mean there are things, you know, as Emily noted in the first one, it was a year where we hit experts in areas we were completely unfamiliar with. Also we got to see people's homes. We got to see what their bookshelves look like or what their -- what their living room looks like. Kind of interesting. What kind of plants they have. Do they have fish? Do they have a dog? If you had a dog in the meeting you got extra points. So, it was very interesting to see people in a different light and opportunity. But also, again, as we saw, there were so many things -- not just in the city, but -- but all over the city of people really showing grace and compassion to others, because it needed it and people needed it and people did a lot of things out of their way to make somebody feel better, because they needed it and both sides needed it and so it was an interesting year from that respect, because we have got to see, again, people in a different light and people in different manner than we had before. The Fire Department. Again, we did our collective labor agreement and it should be on next Tuesday for ratification by you. The union is having a meeting on Monday night to Page 10 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page , —— ratify the contract that we came to. Thanks, again, to Council Member Hoaglun and all his time and effort. Council Member Bernt also spent some time and Council Member Strader. Again, great assistance from the Council to make this come through and it took us only I think seven months. But, you know, lots of places take a lot longer than that. So, I think we got a good contract for you. I think we have got a good agreement with the union. I think they would agree. And so that was not necessarily unusual. It was a little different this last year than it has been. On the unusual side, again, HIPAA, ADA, emergency powers, screening, enforcement of these orders, vaccination protocols -- mean all things we have never really encountered to the degree we encountered them now and, again, the science has changed, the information with the science has changed greatly, so it's been quite an interesting year in that regard. Police Department. Again, could not highlight the park arrest. Obviously, that was a significant moment. That case is still ongoing. It's still pending. The Attorney General's office is prosecuting that case. So, that's still an outstanding matter. But, again, we had a lot of code enforcement and interpretation of orders and how to deal with these things and contact from the public and their concerns. And the schools. So, it was definitely a challenge to make sure that we, as the legal team, could both be conversant in those issues, as well as to help advise everybody on an area that nobody felt very comfortable in in trying to make sure we could navigate through the day. Parks and Rec, again, huge -- huge area of time and effort on all of our parts for our team, because we had playgrounds to close, we had programs to cancel, we had lots of refunds to process. I mean, you know, thank goodness for the parks staff and Steve and his whole team in processing through all of that. Events that were cancelled and vendors that were disappointed and lots and lots of changes that we saw in a very very short window of time and impacting everyone in how we do things. So, as you can see by just that list how many different things changed slightly or greatly because of it and in the middle of that we also transferred the golf course to the city and got that process all completed within a very small window of time as well. So, again, it was a very interesting year as you can see in every single department you can see where COVID has touched people to some degree. Community Development. Again, we had the small business grant program that we helped develop with -- with the Mayor's office and Community Development and Tori. So, it was really a challenge, because, again, it was a very short window of time frame. There was a great deal of effort by Tori and Crystal to weed through those applications and help our business community to kind of foster through that and in the middle of that we added a new urban renewal district in downtown. So, again, lots of things to do and lots of things to do that we normally do, as well as things that we don't normally do on top of that. You know, 2020 -- I think Andrea's comment here that I left in was so profound to me I didn't want to edit it or take it out and it says it has a profound and prolonged sobering effect and I think it does for all of us and I think that's what we saw in the workplace is it was a change and not that it was a bad change, as I have said, but it was a change that we didn't anticipate and have really weathered I think as much as possible and it probably does feel like being stuck on the spin cycle in a washing machine for a year. It's not quite over. I think we are in the 14th month of 2020 is what it feels like, so we are not quite -- not quite through it all yet. So Public Works. You know, we -- we sort of looked at this one and they are, you know, steady and consistent. I mean that is Public Works to a tee. They still purchase things. Now they switched purchasing items and PPE and things like that, but also the other Page 11 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page 8 of— projects they had, many of them could continue to go through. The contracts bid through. We processed all of those and, then, on top of that we went and bought 40 more acres for the wastewater plant that we are going to be adding to the -- to the plant in the future, as well as we have those two bore strikes that we have talked about and dealt with those two -- with a land -- with an appeal to the state board, as well as a potential appeal to court on top of that. We got that resolved. We also had the other one on -- on Ten Mile that we also got resolved. So, again, there was some fairly unusual circumstances on top of the general workload that we normally get through Public Works. So, we do the kind of year-to-year comparison and I did ask, you know, was there a particular reason for some of these and -- and there really isn't. I mean there is not an identifiable driver. A lot of these I think, for example, development agreements, it looks like we did a little bit less. I think, though -- I think Michelle told me in January we had 20 -- no, ten. Sorry. Ten in January. So, some of it is based on the cycle of the development. So, it really has nothing to do with us. It's the same thing for the easements. It looks like we have a huge growth in easements, but, actually, I think two or three years before we had about a hundred and something -- 125 or something. So, again, it's really development driven. It's not driven by us. It's when they choose to develop and, then, the easements are necessary either for the utilities or their construction schedule or phasing. So, those things are pretty cyclical. But as you can see we do have some changes and, you know, we are going to continue to see that same level of growth, if not more. ICRMP claims. Again, those are fairly steady as you can see. We had a little bit more situations of damages to the city's property, but not a great deal more. I attribute some of these things that are less is because, again, people for a lot -- for a certain period of time did less. They didn't go out much. They didn't do much. So, they weren't running into things and not breaking things. So, some of that really is fairly static and pretty consistent year over year. Again, I think as a team we have done a good job of catching these things, reporting them properly, getting them, you know, in our system so that we can track them a lot better. I think the system has gotten much better over the last few years. And now I have a little pause for a moment. With us online is Denyce Udink and Kevin Borger from the city attorney's office in Boise. As you all know they provide our prosecution and police services and have since 2002. 1 will turn it over to Denyce and to Kevin to give their -- their report. Udink: Mr. Mayor, Council Members, it's really our privilege to be here today to talk with you. We always enjoy coming every year to give you an update on the prosecution and police services that we provide for the City of Meridian and I don't know if any of you know how long we have had this contract. Any guesses by anyone? Anybody know? Maybe Joe. Councilmember Borton might know. Borton: Fourteen years. Sixteen years. Udink: It's been a long time. 2002 is how long we have had this contract. So, yeah, it's been a -- it's been a long time. It's been a great relationship I think between our office and the City of Meridian. So, again, we just appreciate it. We do try to work really closely with the Police Department and we are excited for Chief Basterrechea. He will do a great job. And we also try to work really closely with Bill Nary's office and those folks that work Page 12 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page 9 of— there, just so that we can make sure we are providing the services that Meridian really needs. So, we appreciate the relationship. I need to echo some of what Bill Nary talked about with COVID as it affected everybody and affected our office as well and we really had to quickly learn how to keep doing business and keep getting the work done remotely. So, our office has actually been closed for the most part to in-person working, so we have been working remotely ourselves and court has been being conducted pretty much virtually remotely, which has been a very interesting experience. So, we are getting ready to start up jury trials again, which will be an interesting experience. We haven't been doing them since March of last year. So, those prosecutors that haven't done trials for a while are going to have to brush off their skills and get ready for trial. But I just want to quickly give you some information just about the prosecution duties and, then, I will turn it over to Kevin Borger to talk about police advice. I'm going to try to share my screen, so I hope this works. I'm not as proficient as some people. So, can everybody see that home screen? Okay. Perfect. So, again, we are just here to talk about information and updating on the contract. Let me see if I can figure out how to forward it. I apologize. Just one second. Well, let me see if I can figure out how to do this. Just a second. I apologize. Okay. Did that -- did that work. It should have forwarded to the next slide. Can everybody see that? Okay. So, just to give you a little bit of background about our office. So, our office -- we have 15 prosecutors and what that really means is 14 and a half. One of our prosecutors is part time. And, then, we have one full-time victim-witness coordinator in-house in our office that provides victim services for Meridian cases, as well as Boise cases. She primarily focuses on domestic violence-related cases, but she can also provide services on other types as well. Our prosecutors handle five full-time judicial calendars. But, then, we also rotate amongst other calendars as well. We do have a specialty court, domestic violence court, which is now full time for us. It used to be a part- time calendar, but just due to the number of cases that are going in we have created a full-time calendar for that. And, then, we have other types of calendars that we cover primarily for in-custody arraignments. We have something called FTA court that we cover and that is for people that have warrants that are outstanding, they can make a request to come in, appear in front of a judge and get their warrant quashed or possibly get their case resolved at that hearing and, then, we also have our infraction calendar, which actually keeps us pretty busy. We have a number of court trials that we -- that we handle as part of the infraction calendar. We also have settlement conferences and we also have what's called an online dispute portal that we created in our office. When COVID shut everything down we didn't have the ability to go in and have settlement conferences with people that wanted to contest their infraction tickets, so we had to create a different format for them to contact us and to be able to negotiate those cases and so we do have an online portal that we advise people about. Meridian police officers have information on their e-sites that will tell people how to contact us through our portal. So, we have a lot of inquiries that come through through the portal just to talk about infraction cases and see if there is a way we can resolve those cases short of a trial and, then, we also do have the settlement conferences again. So, the court just instituted that again. Those are all remote still, but we also have an opportunity there to talk with people that want to contest their traffic tickets and see if there is anything that we can do for them. So, those are just some of the calendars that we cover. It does keep us pretty busy that's for sure. With respect specifically to prosecution services, there are a number of things that we Page 13 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page 10 of 28 provide for Meridian. So, they are kind of broken up into what do we do in-house versus what do we do through the court system. But, essentially, we are reviewing every single misdemeanor citation that gets issued by police. We review every single misdemeanor arrest that is made by police, just to make sure that everything is -- is compliant with evidence and probable cause standards and things like that that we have a duty to -- to honor. And, then, we also -- for those cases where officers are not able to take any sort of enforcement action or if they have not -- if they are not quite sure what to do, they can send those reports to our office and we have a screening team of three prosecutors that reviews all of those reports that are taken by officers where they haven't otherwise taken any enforcement action and we can decide whether we want to charge, who we want to charge, and do we do that by a summons, which is a written notification, or whether we do that by an arrest warrant. We also provide victim services. I talked about the in-house victim-witness coordinator that we have and so she handles a lot of our domestic violence- related cases. But we also work in conjunction with the victim-witness coordinators that are employed by the Meridian Police Department in making sure that victims are notified of the rights that they have in criminal cases. We have contact with them. We can meet with them. We provide notice to them about court hearings and plea offers and things like that. So, a lot of -- of services to victims and, then, if they have other types of needs we can also provide resources to them through our victim-witness coordinators. And, then, at court, of course, we handle a number of hearings and I'm going to show you some numbers about specific hearings in just a second, but I just wanted to give you an overview of the types of hearings that our prosecutors handle. We -- we handle the case from beginning to end. So, at the beginning, which is an arraignment, all the way through adjudication and, then, even beyond that. Sometimes our cases get appealed after conviction and so we handle all of those appeals. Sometimes offenders will file a post- conviction action and so we handle from beginning to end and, then, beyond. We do this discovery review. Discovery is the process where we provide the defense with the information that we have in our file, police reports, audio recordings and things like that, just to make sure that they have the information that we have with respect to the case. And, then, of course, we work closely with police about preparing officers for court, preparing them for testimony and things like that. So, a lot of things happen kind of at the --the back end of these cases. I just wanted to give you a little bit of a -- an understanding of the number of cases that we open and how many of those are attributed to Meridian City. So, this chart shows that our office in 2020 opened 12,572 cases. That is total misdemeanor and infraction. Of those cases 3,763 were from the City of Meridian. There were 16,939 charges within those 12,572 cases that were opened. So, total charges open for Meridian City is 5,153. And, then, these are the number of hearings that our prosecutors handled total in 2020, 29,979 hearings for 15 prosecutors -- 14 and a half. And of those 8,425 were for Meridian cases. So, I'm not a math person for sure, but roughly one-third of our caseload is attributable to the City of Meridian. So, we certainly appreciate that. Just to give you a little bit of historical information. So, this chart goes back to 2010 and it just kind of shows you, you know, from year to year how many charges we have opened for the City of Meridian. So, you can see right here in 2020 we opened 5,153 charges. That's down a little bit from 2019. And I, actually, was pleasantly surprised by the numbers, because I was expecting a little bit that COVID would have a pretty significant impact on just the number of cases that were being opened and it's probably Page 14 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page 11 of H going to take us a couple of years to really see the impact that COVID has had, but for the most part it's not a huge drop in the number of charges. You know, a few years ago we had more and I'm not really sure, you know, how -- how that trend has happened or what's caused these different trends, but just a little bit of information to give you a historical perspective about the charges that are coming in. This next slide is just a breakdown by category of the misdemeanor offenses that we see from Meridian. So, this is just a pie chart. As you can see right here really the traffic cases are what constitute the biggest categories of cases. So, we have got traffic misdemeanors here. Traffic infractions are the biggest category of charges. But, then, we have broken it down a little bit further. The miscellaneous category can be things like probation violations or contempt that happen post -- post-adjudication or once a case is closed somebody isn't compliant with their sentence and so they will come back on a probation violation or a contempt. Parking. Zoning. These would be the code enforcement cases that we work. With domestic violence. DUIs are another big one. Controlled substances are pretty big for Meridian and, then, property crimes down here. So, this is just to give you a little bit of an idea of the categories of offenses that we see from Meridian charges. And, then, we always like to throw in this top ten and it's a little bit backwards, because the top ten -- it's backwards. So, number one is down here at the bottom. But for Meridian cases from 2020 the number one charge that was charged with was possession of paraphernalia and, then, they go up from there. Another big one you can see is DUIs are a pretty big chunk. Domestic battery, funny enough, is not quite as big as you might expect, although that is a very important charge for our office to prosecute. And, then, disturbing the peace here with 99. But you will see speeding, which is an infraction, is in here. So, just a smattering of charges in the top ten. But we always like to throw that in just so you can kind of see what's happening with Meridian cases. Now, before I turn the time over to Kevin I just wanted to stand for questions if anybody had any questions for me. Simison: Council, any questions at this time? Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Udink: Okay. I pass this to Kevin. Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: Oh, hey, Denyce. Udink: Oh, yes. Cavener: I'm sorry. Just one quick question. I think two slides back when you had the pie chart with -- with all of the charges -- I know that oftentimes when there is a charge it's not solely just that charge, but there is oftentimes two or three different charges. How does your office break that down in the pie chart? If, for instance, if you -- somebody is pulled over for speeding, but they also have a controlled substance on them, how do you guys, you know, quantify that in that pie chart? Are they each separate -- separated out or is it the lead charge that you guys are classifying? Page 15 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page 12 of H Udink: Yes. Mr. Mayor, Council Member -- is it Cavener? I'm sorry, I can't see everybody's faces on my screen. Cavener: That's okay. Udink: Yes. Yes. So, they will be broken out still. Even if they are opened up in one case our system will still apportion them into the category that they belong to. So, the controlled substance will go into that category and the speeding will go into the speeding category or the traffic infraction category. Cavener: Thank you. Strader: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Council Woman Strader. Strader: Thank you, Denyce. I was -- it caught my attention your comment about jury trials being delayed by COVID. I was just curious what's the, you know, backlog of that looking like and does that just mean that cases are delayed and is there an estimate on that or any further info on when that might get cleared up? Udink: Mr. Mayor, Council Woman Strader, there is a significant misdemeanor backlog for jury trials. So, what we are doing right now is we are putting together lists of all of the cases that have been pending trial since the court basically stopped doing jury trials last March, so -- and, then, we are trying to prioritize them according to what is --what are the top ones that need to go to trial first. Anecdotally I haven't pulled the list together yet. Our prosecutors are working on that right now. But I would say that we probably have -- between all of our judges close to 200 jury trials that are backlogged. When you consider that some of our judges are only going to have one, two, maybe four jury trial days a month, it's going to take us a while to get through those cases, so -- Strader: Thank you. Simison: Okay. Borger: All right. Thank you. I will go ahead and begin. Kevin Borger. It's my pleasure to speak to you again, Mr. Mayor, Council Members. I am trying to remember how many years it's been and I can't recall, but I have been able to work with Meridian for a number of years now. The main thing for me regarding COVID is that I haven't been able to come into the office and one of the things I enjoyed most is three afternoons of the week I would spend time at the Police Department and that allowed me personal interaction with the officers and just a lot more --just increase the ability to have the questions that just come up previous shift or something and those aren't as easily answered now, but still at home and the computer has allowed for e-mail questions and all of that continues. A little bit of background. I actually live in Meridian and have done so since 1986. So, working with Meridian is more of -- very personal for me, because these are my people I feel like and Page 16 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page ——28 1 have been privileged to work for the city of Boise for 30 years now. Bill Nary hired me back in 1991 and so I know Michelle. Emily. Ted and I shared an office back in Boise. So, very comfortable working with your legal staff and I appreciate them all very much and feel like we have a very good working relationship. One of the things is that if I ever feel like the police are asking me to do something, I contact Bill to make sure I'm not overstepping our bounds, because I know there is a line there that we don't want to cross. But you can see on the screen there the various things that I'm responsible for and the legal questions still do come in and we work with those. The weapon disposition is probably one of the consistent ones that happens every -- every week and, then, we go through those. The next slide, Denyce. Regular legal updates. I found -- and Kim -- Kim Smith is my supervisor and she also is available for questions and there is some things that the police go directly to her for and one of those -- she became the go to person regarding protests and I know she shared that information with the police department as well, but she asked that I do legal updates. So, every month beginning I have been giving the police department an overview of the legal cases that have come down from the previous month with -- regarding Idaho, the Ninth Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court. So, since I'm not there in person in order to answer the questions or just bring it up in the way I used to, provided it in a paper format, and, then, address any questions that come from there. Briefing bulletins. If there is something that can't wait or it's more unusual, we will bring that up. One of the ones that is still lingering -- if you remember State v. Clark is one thing that we continue to struggle with and how to deal with and that's where officers, if the crime -- misdemeanor crime does not happen in their presence they are not allowed to initiate an arrest and notice just today, in fact, that there is discussion in the legislature to have a constitutional amendment that might address that. So, that's certainly something that's encouraging. So, we have worked very closely with the officers on best practices on how to address that with the citizens, how they can make sure they are in compliance with the rules as they have come down and, then, the case law is continuing to progress and so we keep track of that. Classroom training. I spend a considerable amount of time getting ready for that and, then, command staff decided not to have that in person. I was scheduled to do that in February. So, that's going to be put off a little bit. They haven't determined a date for me. So, the work is done, the topics are ready, it's just a matter of when we are going to do that. So, we are prepared to do that whenever -- whenever they determine it's appropriate. Okay. Next slide, Denyce. Here is just an example of one of the bulletins done and it talks about exceptions. Custodial -- I'm having a hard time. My eyesight isn't as good. But, you know, a lot of times we will give a scenario and, then, also an answer, some notes, and, then, case law per se that goes along with that. But that gives you an idea of the -- of the format and, then, allows the officers to digest that and, then, ask any questions that they have. Okay. Denyce. Past trainings. We -- use of force is always a big one, because we know that leads to problems with the citizens. We are very cognizant of the important aspect that plays and case law describes for us how to deal with that and one of the things that comes up a lot is the people with mental difficulties and so I have -- I have trained multiple areas on how to deal with the mentally ill and I think we are doing well in that area. Some of the different ways you deal with those folks is very important and so we also have been trained on that. We have talked about body worn cameras and how effective those can be, not only in prosecuting cases, but also in liability situations where police departments Page 17 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page —of 28 all over the U.S. have been able to show that one person's perspective isn't -- isn't actually shown on the -- on the video. So, those have actually been very helpful. Okay. Denyce. Available with the -- with the advent of the cell phone I am available 24/7 and I do get calls in the evening occasionally and the officers are respective of my time, but they do call occasionally. On the other side, the prosecutors, there is an on-call team and so anytime there is a question, but particularly if there is a need for a warrant -- and blood draw warrants are a big one and the on-call prosecutors handle that, as well as arrest warrants. The Clark situation I mentioned earlier, one way of dealing with that is to call the magistrate judge and ask for an arrest warrant while dealing with the individual, so that the officer isn't arrested on his own authority, but he has the backing of the judge after hearing probable cause statements in order to execute that warrant and so that's a service that's provided and that's available 24/7. Okay, Denyce. So, when you wrap all that up, I think the--the city of Boise is very proud to represent Meridian and when the prosecutors go to court one thing Denyce didn't mention is that -- and I did a lot of prosecuting in my day when Meridian was part of the -- part of my caseload. There is no distinguishing between a Meridian case and a Boise case. The prosecutor often won't -- if they do notice they don't -- don't distinguish. Their cases are handled the same and very proud to be able to say that we work for the city -- with the City of Meridian and I will stand for any questions. Simison: Thank you, Kevin. Council, any questions? Hoaglun: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Hoaglun. Hoaglun: Just a quick question for Mr. Borger based on his long experience with Meridian and what you just wrapped up there. Would you say this -- this type of contract and this relationship is a win-win for -- for the office there in Boise, as well as our citizens in Meridian? Borger: Well, I certainly think so. It allows the prosecutors -- I think we have additional -- a couple people on staff -- when you look at the numbers I think it's a -- certainly a win for Meridian when you consider how many additional people you would have to hire to handle that sort of a caseload. The prosecutors in the office are able to assimilate the cases without the additional burden of running from courtroom to courtroom and yet they gain the experience of dealing with different officers and perhaps a slightly different way of doing things, but not that -- not that much. But I know they certainly have appreciated the work and I know I do. Hoaglun: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Kevin. Simison: Thank you. All right. Mr. Nary. Nary: How do I get my presentation back up? Kevin kind of buried the lead there a little bit, too. This might be Kevin's last report. Kevin is planning on retiring here in late spring Page 18 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page ——28 before summer. So, he's going to be passing the torch over there. Kevin is a great person and a great attorney and a great person to work with and, you know, when I first got promoted at the city of Boise back in 1991, 1 had to hire two attorneys and the first person I hired was Ted and the third person I hired was Kevin and he never let me forget he wasn't the second person. But I think after 30 years it's worked out for Kevin pretty well. So, I congratulate Kevin on being able to retire and move on to the next phase of his career. He has been a great asset. On the contract I will add to your question, Council Member Hoaglun. Now, again, 35 years ago it was a lot different world we lived in. But I was the Meridian prosecutor for three and a half years and running from courtroom to courtroom all day every day is very exhausting and you never feel like you are very good at it. Getting folks that this is what they do, they do it very well, very professionally day in and day out, this is part of their work, part of how they do business, it is a great asset to the city, it's a great asset to the city of Boise. As you can see we use -- we are about a third of their caseload, so it does help their teams, it does help us. So, it is a very good marriage we have had now for almost 20 years. So, I appreciate Denyce and her team and Kevin and all the folks at the city attorney's office, they have taken a huge burden off of us. Again, those 3,000 public records requests that go through the Police Department, again, those all have some touch to the city attorney's office. Again, it may be a very simple, yes, that's the right information, send it, to much more complicated requests. So, they do provide a great service to the city for a very fair value that we pay. To wrap up, again, my thoughts on the last year. Again, I am incredibly appreciative to work for the city. I have lived here for 35 years. I really feel like I'm a Meridian guy and this is what I do and I don't think people remember I worked anywhere else anymore. I feel very privileged to work for the Mayor and Council in the city. I feel very good for the city and what we do and I especially appreciate the team that I work with every day. We are in our 17th year now, Michelle and I and Ted. Emily has been with us 15. Andrew has been with us 13 so -- going on 14. So, we have a very good team. We work well together. We know each other very well. We know what we do well and we know who does -- who does what the best and -- and if we can't figure it out we usually give it to Emily; right? I think that's kind of the way we tend to think. But we really do all get what Meridian is about and what the Meridian way means and this year, again, I think -- I can't emphasize enough how important it was to use and I think to our community to keep things going. The development community was very appreciative that we could keep things going. The business community was very appreciative that we could keep things going and -- and as much as people don't know, most of the time what the legal department does -- because I get that question all the time. What do you guys do all day? How in the world is there work for four attorneys every day and, you know, I could send them my presentation, but they just don't know, again, staffing all your meetings, reviewing every single document in some form, either we wrote it or we reviewed it of every single thing we do, whether we are buying things, selling things, whatever it is, we have some level of touch to that in some fashion and because we have been here for such a long period of time generally we are the ones that have done it. If it wasn't done by some other attorney from ten years ago or 20 years ago. Our team found ways to remain connected. It definitely helped that we have a long term history together. That's certainly helpful. We had an intern last summer for a short period of time. It was a little clunky, but we did the best we could and she was a great intern and did a great job for us, but it wasn't quite the same level of Page 19 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page 16 of H experience, because, again, we generally have two people in the office every day. I'm here every day. Generally there is one more person right now that comes in every day, so that we can make sure we can be responsive as necessary to any of the needs. But, again, Teams works great. E-mail works great. The phone works. All of those methods of communication we found that we didn't think would work very well do and so we could keep things going and I think, again, our community appreciated that. I think, you know, I personally appreciated that. So, I don't have anything else, unless you have some questions for me or -- again, all of our team is online. So, if you have any questions for me. Otherwise, again, it's a privilege to be here for another year. A privilege to be able to present this to you to show you a little snapshot of what our year was like. Simison: Thank you. Council, any questions for Bill or are you opening up all of your staff to questions? Nary: If they can. I think Ted is only on the phone, so it's a little harder for Ted. Simison: Okay. Michelle, she's here, too. Nary: Michele is here. So, yeah, if you have a question for Michelle that's fine. Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Strader: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. It's not a -- it's not a question, just a comment and I always appreciate your presentation, but I think for all of us it's a good reminder what the last 13 months has looked like and your ability to kind of -- feels like a lot, but you have done a great job of kind of responding to every curveball that this past year has thrown at the city and your department and you guys just make it look really really easy and by doing so that makes the city look better, it makes the Council, the Mayor, our employees all look better. I know it's not easy. I know it takes a lot of time and attention. I just want to say thanks to you and Michelle and your team. You guys really are a solid team and a good example of what a legal department can look like. Thank you. Simison: Council Woman Strader. Strader: I echo those comments as well and I don't think you guys really skipped a beat, Bill, and -- it's been great getting to know everybody. I guess looking at two years -- it feels like this past year the workload has been a lot higher. Do you think that's the exception or the new normal? Do you feel like you are adequately resourced right now? Maybe give us a feel for that -- your view on that caseload that everyone's handling. Nary: Yeah. Council Member Strader, that's -- that's a great observation and comment. You know, right now we have talked about that. We had --we had actually in the -- in the Page 20 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page 1 t of H -- in the -- in our budget plan we had potential for adding another attorney on staff this coming fiscal year for FY-22. We pushed that back a little bit, because the trade off of the workload volume is the lesser travel, the ability to be more concentrated at home for folks. So, there is --there is some trade-offs to those things that allowed us to continue it without it feeling overwhelming. But we are always monitoring that. You know, we have -- we have talked for a number of years about potentially the police services or the prosecution services changing model, but at this time there is really no reason to. I mean the -- the -- I will add one more comment about the city of Boise. In the 16 years I have been the city attorney here I have never had a complaint for the Police Department about anything the city attorney's office has told them, advised them, trained them, ever. They appreciate them greatly. So, I don't see -- I think we are going to -- you know, we will always keep that in mind as we grow. As soon as things get back to whatever the next normal is going to be, we definitely want to make sure we don't get burnout, we don't get overload, we want to make sure people, you know, can take a vacation when people actually do those things anymore and go do things occasionally when people can do things and so we may have to be very flexible about staffing in the future. But, you know, I'm not planning on going anywhere anytime soon. I don't think any of our team's planning are going anywhere anytime soon. But we definitely will keep in mind of the future for our office. We definitely would never want to leave the city in a bad situation where we don't have adequate staff. Strader: Thanks, Bill. Nary: All right. Well, thank you everybody. Simison: Mr. Borton. Borton: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Borton. Borton: Just real quick. That last comment you made, Bill, is a big deal. Among everything else, the fact that Denyce and Kevin and that leadership with the prosecution team and our Police Department, having all their issues addressed accurately and timely and there is not complaints and concerns, that's a really big deal and hats off to you both in -- in providing those kind of services and prosecution services to the City of Meridian. Denyce, Kevin, I have known you both for a long time. That's really appreciated. That's a very important point and it's a testament to the work that -- and leadership that you are providing. Kevin, good luck to you. I don't I know if it's retirement or changing careers somewhere, but you have been a hell of an attorney for a long time around the valley and a lot of us know that. So, appreciate you both and keep up the great work. Nary: Well, thank you. 13. Planning Department: Valley Regional Transit Fiscal Year 2021 Cooperative Agreement Page 21 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page 18—28 Simison: Thank you, Mr. Nary, for that reminder of what 2021 -- I think I tried to forget a lot of the stuff that you remind us that we did this last year, but -- very much. All right. Thank you, Denyce and Kevin. Appreciate it very much. With that we will move on to Item 13, which is the Planning Department and Valley Regional Transit Fiscal Year 2021 Cooperative Agreement and I will turn this over to Mr. Hood. Hood: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Members of the Council. Can you all hear me okay? Okay. Great. It's -- it's my pleasure to be back in front of you all. It's been a little bit, so good to see you all, at least virtually on my -- my screen. Before I get going real quick I do want to just piggyback on the last topic and thank Mr. Nary for his help and his team. I'm a little hurt that this topic we are going to talk about here wasn't highlighted in his PowerPoint, but they do a lot for our department, so I get it, I understand that, so, again, thanks to the legal team. I will also say I do have my -- my puppy is here. I don't know if you can see her. But I should get bonus points since, you know, we are on this virtual call, I got a dog on the screen, so -- anyways, I will jump into the topic at hand. Annually the city does budget for VRT services and our dues and we also annually establish a cooperative agreement between the city and VRT that outlines how the city funds are to be used. City staff from legal -- so, Ted Baird was the primary lead from legal helping to craft this agreement. Members of the Finance team and Planning, particularly Miranda, have been working with VRT staff to prepare the FY-21 cooperative agreement between VRT and the city you have in your packet, which covers, again, how the 272,000 dollars that we have got budgeted for their services, capital improvements, dues and overhead and assessments will be used. Some slight changes have been made from the FY-2020 template. We have been using largely the same agreement for many years now, but we did have to update the -- the template. Surprise. Surprise. A lot of that had to do with COVID; right? And the associated CARES funding impacts. So, we didn't necessarily reinvent the wheel with this agreement, but it got a pretty hefty overhaul. Stephen Hunt and Leslie Pedroza are here. I see them on the screen. And they are going to walk you through some of those services that we receive with VRT and contribute to and I will stand for any questions you may have, though, at the outset before turning it over to them for their presentation. Simison: Council, any questions for Mr. Hood at this time? Okay. Then we will turn this over to Stephen and Leslie. Hunt: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Members of the Council. My name is Stephen Hunt and I'm the development director of Valley Regional Transit and I'm trying to share a presentation, which I think you all see now. So, as -- as Caleb mentioned, we are here just to provide a brief update on the changes to the 2021 cooperative agreement and a couple of things that we wanted to highlight with that is how the delay to the fixed route expansion impacted our original agreement and -- and, then, we will talk about other updates and, then, conclude with a discussion about the Veterans Transportation pilot, which is something that's starting this year. So, to start off, the -- the VRT board did approve delaying the start of the service in Meridian until FY-22 and so our -- our current program start date is October 1st of 2021 and reasons for that include the ridership decline that we have experienced because of COVID and the increase in telework, which we continue Page 22 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page 19—28 actually to see through the start of this fiscal year that ridership has not rebounded and so we are holding off on starting that service, which would have started this -- kind of late spring and summer until the fall of -- of this year. We do believe that the service is still meeting its original objective or will meet its original objective of supporting both the residential and employment growth that's occurring in Meridian and along the corridor. We -- also with this delay we would be applying the service credit in FY-21, instead of onto the service onto -- onto other services that are provided in FY-21 and that's reflected in the update to the cooperative agreement. So, the agreement itself -- Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: Stephen, I don't mean to interrupt you, but I don't know if you are going to be covering this later in your presentation. Are you prepared to kind of break down for Council what those other services are and where they are located and how they are benefiting Meridian residents? Hunt: Council Member Cavener, Mr. Mayor, I don't have a specific slide with those broken down. I can speak to them as they are presented both in the -- in your packet and --yeah, I would be happy to share more about the specific services that are being provided in FY- 21. Cavener: Great. You can do that now or towards the end of your presentation, whichever is best for you. But I think that's an important piece to be discussed. Hunt: Thank you, Mr. Cavener -- Councilman Cavener. And I will do that on this slide as we talk about how the cooperative agreement is -- has been updated and one of the -- one of the things that was included in this update is the service exhibit and -- and in that service exhibit, which, again, is included in your packet, is a description of the different services that are supported by the various contributions from the City of Meridian. So, the cooperative agreement was updated both to reflect the delay in service and to simplify the agreement from where it had been and provide both transparency and flexibility in how we leveraged resources that were available to us. This is what Caleb was alluding to when he talked about CAREs resources being available to us this year and what we wanted to document in the cooperative agreement is both the amount that we are requesting and what we are delivering in exchange for those contributions and so we included a service exhibit, which highlights the services that are being provided to the City of Meridian and those include --there is a regional overhead portion of that, which --which covers any of the VRT planning support efforts. So, that would be all the planning work that VRT is doing with the City of Meridian on -- whether it be fixed route or the Harvest Transit services or the pilot that we will be talking about in a little bit, all of that planning work is part of that regional overhead, along with support that comes through customer service and the transit IT, which is what supports things like being able to see where your bus is on your phone when you are -- when you are scheduling a trip, et cetera. The other part of the contribution is the service contribution and the service contribution is Page 23 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page 20 of 28 based on the number of miles -- the percent of miles that are provided within the city limits and currently there are two fixed route services that make up the service contribution for FY-21 and those are the Route 40 and Route 42. Route 40 is a route that begins in Caldwell, serves Nampa, serves Meridian and goes into downtown Boise. It hits a peak hour service connecting those regional employment and residential centers in the valley. The Route 42 is -- similarly runs between Caldwell, Nampa, Meridian and Boise. It does not go all the way downtown, it goes to Town Square Mall in Boise, which connects to the rest of the fixed route network. It -- it serves more of Meridian, however. It goes down Overland going -- goes down Overland between Ten Mile and Maple Grove. So, with stops all along the way and that's been a corridor that we have been working with Meridian staff on in terms of thinking about how that continues to develop today, that that's the service that is on the Overland route -- Overland Road corridor in Meridian is Route 42 and that runs throughout the day and provides local types of connections in both directions, both to Nampa and to Boise. And there is about 21 percent of the -- of the miles on those two routes traveled through the City of Meridian and that's where -- that's how that service contribution is -- is calculated. This year there was not a specific capital contribution. In years past we have requested for capital when there is a need for capital that supports City of Meridian services. Last year, as you will recall, there was a capital contribution request made for additional vehicles, so that we would be able to provide the service that we will be providing at the beginning of FY-22. This was for two additional electric vehicles, along with the -- the pedestrian and passenger amenities and stops along -- in Meridian. And, then, there is a special assessment that we -- that we make for our -- for our partners when there are specific services or programs that support their communities and in Meridian that includes Harvest Transit, as well as rides -- the Rides To Wellness program, which provides free transportation to medical appointments at participating clinics, including those in the City of Meridian. Harvest Transit provides transportation to -- free transportation to seniors and persons with disability Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 3.00 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Excuse me. So, the -- the cooperative agreement outlines each of those -- those services and the -- the role that VRT has in providing those services in exchange for the -- for the fees and I will pause now if there are any additional questions about services that are provided to the City of Meridian in exchange for -- for that -- for those fees. Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: Stephen, I guess a two part question. Part one is -- is it, then, VRT's belief this city isn't already paying for those services and I guess part two would be a breakdown of cost allocated to each of those items that are -- that are identified in Exhibit 1. Hunt: Thank you, Councilman Cavener, Mr. Mayor. Your first question is it our belief that the city does not pay for those services already. Was that what you asked? Cavener: Yeah. Mr. Mayor, if I may. Page 24 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page 21 of H Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: I guess, Stephen, where I'm trying to get at is I -- again, maybe I'm -- I'm not looking at this correctly. The city provides a funding allocation to VRT on an annual basis and we increased our allocation this year with the belief that we were going to establish a fixed route service in Meridian. We are now not doing the fixed route piece, but VRT is still asking the city to fund at the same amount to go towards these four items that are identified in Exhibit 1. But my belief is that with our funding allocation we have already provided the funding for that. I'm just -- I'm just trying to understand if -- if -- if I'm wrong and if I'm wrong, boy, it wouldn't be the first time, but if I'm not I'm trying to understand why these additional funds are needed to go to these four items. Hunt: Thank you for that clarification, Council Member, and I will be happy to take the first stab at that. Caleb, if you want to follow up with anything else. So, we are here talking about a cooperative agreement for -- for the current year that we are in in part because of some of the changes that were made late in the -- in the-- in the year, including delaying the -- the start of fixed route service, as well as incorporating CARES resources into -- into the VRT budget. So, we have not yet billed and Meridian has not yet paid the contribution for services that have been provided since October 1 st and will continue through this fiscal year. That's what will be happening once this cooperative agreement is completed. So, to your -- to your point, the local cost allocation, the methodology that we use to -- to determine what fees we would be requesting from the City of Meridian are the very same that we used in -- in this process. It's one and the same and the -- so, I hope that is -- I hope that's clear and the amounts that we are requesting for FY-21 consider the fact that we have delayed the start of service until the beginning of FY-22. Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: I will hop off this. But, Stephen, there are -- there are savings, because we are not doing the -- the route in Meridian. Hunt: Yes. Cavener: Okay. But you are wanting us to allocate those dollars that we would have already spent for the fixed route service in addition to what was already called for in Exhibit 1. Is that also correct? Hunt: No. Cavener: Okay. Hunt: There are about 170,000 dollars that we had requested -- that we had anticipated to request for FY-21 that we are not requesting from the City of Meridian because we delayed service -- because we delayed the start of service until the beginning of FY 22. Page 25 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page 22 of 28 The original request, if I remember correctly, was about 442,000 and that's what we had been working with staff on. We -- we have delayed the start of service until the beginning of next year and, no, there hasn't been an exchange of any funds for FY-21 services as yet. So, the only request we are making are those that we are asking for and describing in this presentation of 272,000. And I -- the breakdown of those costs I think was the second part of your question, unless, Caleb, there was anything you wanted to add, which would be about 60,000 dollars or what -- 63,000 dollars for regional overhead and with the contribution -- or the credit -- the service credit that we rolled forward from FY-20 into '21, there is only about 35,000 dollars -- 36,000 dollars in service contribution. There is no capital contribution and the special assessment, those that are supporting Harvest Transit and the Rides To Wellness program, was 173,000 and that totals the 272. Happy to answer any other questions if there are any on that. Hoaglun: Mr. Mayor? Borton: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Hoaglun. Hoaglun: Just real quick, Stephen. I was just kind of curious. Under the special assessment service contribution it's based on -- on annual hours of service and, then, under that funding made available through the CARES Act, the pilot service between Meridian and Boise Veterans Medical Center, it was based on annual rides. Was that just a requirement of the federal system and on how to -- how to count that to fund? Hunt: Council Member, Mr. Mayor, no, the difference just had to do with how we -- how we end up being charged for those funds with some of the services, like Harvest Transit, that's based on hours of service provided. Other -- other funding models are based on -- on trips provided and the Rides To Wellness program and what we would be doing with the -- the Veterans program is intended -- is expected to be on a -- on a per trip basis and so when we describe the -- the budget for those programs, we express those in assumed number of trips. Hoaglun: Got it. Thank you, Stephen. Mr. Mayor. Simison: Councilman Borton, did you have a question? Borton: I did. I might have shared some of the confusion on the numbers and maybe this question for Caleb will put -- highlight it. Can you remind me, Caleb, in the August of 2020 we allocated X amount for the combined VRT services and what I was struggling with in understanding this presentation was what's the amount that we budgeted and due to COVID or otherwise, what's the -- is there a different amount that's being requested and I had read this the same way, that the 51 ,000 dollars that had been budgeted for the fixed line services isn't needed, but the request is that they want to retain that 51 ,000 and sprinkle it amongst the other areas that we have already funded. So, that's -- that's where I got a little lost in the numbers, so I couldn't track. Page 26 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page—of 28 Hood: Mr. Mayor, Councilman Borton, Council Members, I don't have -- I'm trying to pull up my numbers from Finance. But let me just talk to you about the methodology we use without getting into the numbers. We did have a discussion with VRT and the Mayor's office about should we roll the 50 -- the service credit of 51 ,250 forward another year, because that is, quote, unquote, earmarked for the start of the -- the Ten Mile through downtown to The Village and back service and we thought it would be cleaner working with Finance -- Todd and Jenny both recommended let's not keep that on the books, let's basically use that, even though it was budgeted for that this year, that way we don't have to keep tracking it that way, spend that and -- and, then, not carry it forward again, but use that money and, then, next year we will come in with an enhancement for that service. So, the numbers do get -- I apologize that it's confusing, but that's what Finance recommended we do. I will just -- and we can get the numbers, I just don't have them handy -- the numbers in August that you all approved for the budget. I think it's more coincidence that the -- the dollar amount that we are spending that's addressed in the cooperative agreement is very very similar to the budgeted amount that you approved in August. But to Councilman Cavener's question and yours, Mr. Borton, we aren't reallocating those -- we kind of are, right, the 50 -- 51 and change we are using, but we aren't fully spending what you authorized us to spend this August in FY-21 . So, we will come back next year with an enhancement for that. So, it is confusing and I'm sorry I don't have all the numbers in a nice table to show you how that works, but that -- that is the case here. I will just --just also say some of that cost allocation method that Stephen mentioned did affect our, you know, year over, so for the last several years we have been -- we have been providing relatively a flat -- you know, it's based on our population, some of it, and service hours and some of that. That has also taken an increase. So, those regular services that we received from VRT have had a small uptick in -- I think some coincidence on why the numbers are really close. But, hopefully, that helps and I will still -- I will look for that table, because I do have one that shows the breakdown and get that to Council so you can see that a little clearer. Borton: Okay. Thanks. Simison: Council, any further questions at this point in time or would you like Stephen to continue? All right. Stephen, I will let you go ahead and continue. Hunt: Thank you. So, the last thing that we wanted to talk about is the -- the Veterans Transportation pilot. So, I'm going to -- I'm going to change slides and turn it over to Leslie to speak about this pilot program. Pedrosa: Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Members of Council. I'm Lisa Pedrosa, I'm the operations director and I'm the one that was challenged with helping spend that 51 ,000 dollars you are all asking about with this pilot for Veterans Transportation. So, I worked with our staff, as well as city staff, and we came up with an idea to pilot a transportation program that would offer within the same service area that Harvest Transit and Rides To Wellness provide service for and have transportation strictly to and from those residents to the Boise VA in downtown. So, we are looking at starting in the spring of this year, piloted through the rest of this fiscal year. Our service providers, who currently give rides Page 27 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page—of 28 for the Rides To Wellness program, will continue to do the same rides for the same service. It will be available 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. We made some assumptions. We assume -- we will start with, you know, up to ten trips a day and, then, once we kind of pilot the program, see how it's going to work, see what those costs may be, then, we will do the next steps to assess what it will cost for the following years to come. Some of the -- the way we would fund this program is we pay a boarding fee, plus a mileage per trip basis for each person. So, those are the costs that we came up with and between now and the end of September we don't expect to spend that full 51 ,000 dollars, so that's -- that's our plan is to not spend that amount, but that -- that's what we are going to do with the funds to pilot this program and see -- it's been a need. It's been asked about a lot from the riders of Harvest Transit of how they can get there. So, we hope this will fill that gap. Strader: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Council Woman Strader. Strader: I'm a little -- I don't want to muddy the waters, but I am having a hard time sort of tracking and following. It does say in -- I guess page five of the agreement that funding is made possible to get from Meridian to the Veterans -- to the VA, that that -- that that funding is from the CARES Act. But, then, you are saying that there is this 51 ,000 dollar credit that's helping to fund it. Is it both? And I guess just a general question. How does this compare to like giving people an Uber or something? Give me a feel for that. Pedrosa: Thank you, Council Woman Strader. As far as the Lyft-Uber option, we do have some programs that do use that first mile-last mile connection and whatever the cost is a person pays a flat fee and, then, we pay the balance of that ride. We chose not to do that with this option, because they are not, for the most part, wheelchair accessible. So, we wanted to make sure that we have that ability to provide the trips for anybody who needed to get to the Veterans Administration. So, we opted to go with our providers now that are wheelchair accessible. Stephen, I don't know if you want to address that question about the CARES Act funding. That's your department. Hunt: Thanks, Leslie and Council Woman Strader. I think that we probably misrepresented -- the 51 ,000 that was the service carry forward from 2020 wasn't the source of-- it isn't the -- those aren't the monies that are being used for this pilot. It is the CARES resources and the monies that I think we were able to save because of COVID and we were not having as many trips and as much demand on services that we had planned on through 2020 and so we were repurposing those resources, but it wasn't the -- the 51,000 that we have talked about a couple of times. That -- that amount of money, which was set aside for expanded fixed route service, is being applied as a credit to what otherwise would be a larger service contribution. Strader: Mr. Mayor, thank you. I -- I think I understand now. Curious -- a pilot is a great idea to see if something is successful, but it's hard to take a service away once we start providing it. Do you have an estimate of what the annual operating cost would be for this Page 28 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page—of 28 program, so that we could know that, because in the future there won't be CARES Act funding. Pedrosa: I believe the estimated amount we did for an annual cost was around 170,000, if I remember correctly. I will have to get back to you on that with the exact number. But we did allocate a whole year's cost as well. Strader: Okay. Is that -- sorry. Is that for Meridian specifically? Our share would be 170,000? Pedrosa: No. That's -- that is the fully loaded cost. So, that would be -- a portion will be federally funded and, then, there would be local matches I could provide. Strader: Okay. That -- that makes more sense. Thank you. Pedrosa: You are welcome. Simison: Council, any further questions or any further information needed to be shared by Stephen or Leslie? Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: To either Stephen or Leslie. You talked about the Harvest Transit riders asking for this service. What's been the response from the VA? I was under the impression the VA provides a transit service already and so I'm curious if I'm -- again, if I'm mistaken so be it. But what's -- what's been the communication and direction from the VA about this? Pedrosa: Mr. Mayor and Councilman, so we did reach out to the VA. Currently the Disabled American Veterans do provide transportation from Canyon county in and they did say that they would make stops in Meridian on a space available basis, but for the most part their vehicle does fill up in Canyon county before it gets to Meridian. So, that limits the amount of rides that they would be able to take continuing on into Boise. Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: I feel like that we are kind of -- I don't know. I'm not getting a lot of direct answers today and it's -- it's getting a little frustrating. Is the VA asking for this service or not? Pedrosa: No. It was not brought to us by the VA. Cavener: Okay. Thank you. Page 29 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page 26 of 28 Simison: Councilman Cavener, I can speak to that. This was something that was brought to my attention at, quite frankly, the Rock of Honor event with veterans where they were expressing problems with using Harvest Transit does not -- does not go outside of the City of Meridian limits and so they were looking for a way to get the users, which Harvest Transit currently serves, to the VA, which is one of the main areas they need to go. Cavener: But I guess, Mr. Mayor, is it that they are choosing to not want to use the services that are provided by the VA or the VA is not meeting there -- isn't able to provide? I guess that's the piece I'm -- I'm under the impression that the VA will pick up people in Meridian and take them to the VA, whether it's part of a trip to Canyon county or not. Simison: That is not the experience that has been shared with me by our local veterans. Cavener: Okay. Appreciate that. Hunt: Council Member Cavener, Mr. Mayor? Simison: Mr. Hunt. Hunt: So, this pilot project initiated as a conversation between City of Meridian staff and VRT to see what we might be able to create in terms of a connection between the City of Meridian and the VA. Simison: Council, any further questions or comments at this point in time? Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: What's the next step that you or staff or VRT is looking for? Simison: Mr. Hood? Hood: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Councilman Cavener, Council. So, we do have this on -- on your agenda for you to authorize us to enter into this agreement with -- with VRT. I can share some of that information that we have talked about today, so you -- I mean we want you to be comfortable, obviously, with this, so I can show you the -- the dollars budgeted for this year versus the -- the corporative agreement if you want another week or two even if -- if need be. There isn't a dire need to approve this tonight if you are uncomfortable. So, that was the idea going in, but you brought up some good questions and I feel like we should probably share some of that information with you first. So, I think we can, again, continue this to next week and we will share the dollars a little bit more and, hopefully, that's a little clearer. Cavener: That would be very very helpful. Page 30 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page— of 28 Bernt: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Bernt. Bernt: Yeah. I would agree that we are, obviously, not ready to make a -- you know, a recommendation tonight or to vote on anything. I -- next week may work or even, you know, sometime into the future, if it's not imminent. It just looks like there is just a lot of questions that are unanswered or that there is a lot of confusing data that's not making sense and so maybe we should swerve back and make sure that, you know, the questions that were asked tonight are answered probably in a more clear way, so we have a better understanding of what you are asking us to do and what that looks like and so whether that's next week or two weeks or three weeks, we just need to get it right and so we are all on the same page. Simison: Mr. Nary, do we need a motion to move something or can we just add it at a future agenda that makes sense? It's under Department/Commission Reports, so it's -- Nary: So, Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, you can -- you can just simply add it to a future agenda. Simison: Okay. Nary: You don't have to do it today. You can -- you can set it in our are normal agenda setting. Simison: Okay. All right. Then we will work to bring the information to Council within a more clear concise way, so that you can track what's being asked and the details of this process and if we feel like there is -- that information is shared, we can bring it back for a future conversation or revert back to what was originally approved in the budget. Hood: Thank you. Simison: Okay. Thank you very much. With that do I have a motion? Hoaglun: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Hoaglun. Hoaglun: I move we adjourn our work session. Cavener: Second. Simison: I have a motion and a second to adjourn. Is there any discussion? If not, all in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed nay. The ayes have it and we are adjourned. MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. Page 31 Meridian City Council Work Session Item#1. February 16,2021 Page 28 of 28 MEETING ADJOURNED AT 6:03 P.M. (AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) 3 / 2 2021 MAYOR ROBERT E. SIMISON DATE APPROVED ATTEST: CHRIS JOHNSON - CITY CLERK Page 32