April 23, 2002 City Council
Meridian City Council Meeting April 23, 2002
The regularly scheduled meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order
at 6:30 P.M. on Tuesday, April 23, 2002, by Mayor Robert D. Corrie.
Members Present: Mayor Robert Corrie, Tammy de Weerd, Keith Bird, Bill Nary,
Cherie McCandless.
Others Present: Gary Smith, Shari Stiles, Bill Nichols, Mike Worley, Tom Kuntz
and Will Berg.
Item 1. Roll-call Attendance:
X Tammy de Weerd X Bill Nary
X Cherie McCandless X Keith Bird
X Mayor Robert Corrie
Corrie: Okay, I’m going to open the City Council regular meeting on Tuesday
April 23, 2002 at 6:35 P.M. in the City Council chambers. I want to welcome
everybody here this evening and am looking forward to the presentations. Mr.
Berg, if you will do the roll call attendance, please.
Item 2. Adoption of the Agenda:
Corrie: Okay. Council, Item number 2 is the adoption of the agenda. I think Gary
Smith would like to add one more item to his report on this new item about the
request for a mud volleyball request that is going to happen, I think, in July for the
Epileptic Foundation. Are there any other additions that the council might have
or the staff might have? Okay.
Worley: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Yes. Mr. Chief.
Worley: I’d like to add an item under staff reports.
Corrie: Okay, I’ll put you second under, right after me. Okay. Any other
additions?
McCandless: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Cheri.
McCandless: In regard to what we discussed this morning in department head
meeting about contracts, could we have a little discussion about that at some
point?
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April 23, 2002
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Corrie: Yes, but I don’t know if we’re going to have time tonight, but we might.
McCandless: Okay.
Corrie: I think we ought to give the Council a little heads-up before we do that,
though.
McCandless: Okay.
Corrie: I would like to them, get some of their radar scopes, so they don’t get
smacked in the back of the head with it.
McCandless: Okay, thanks.
Corrie: So I would presume that we maybe do that at the next meeting.
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McCandless: Okay. Are we having a meeting on the 30?
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Corrie: I doubt that the 30 because the 30 is going be a long meeting. Well,
it's going to be a long meeting. I haven’t told them exactly that either so they’re
going to get blind-sided on that one.
McCandless: Wouldn’t want to blind-side us, but---
Corrie: But I’m going to call a special meeting. I’ll explain that tonight too. But
we either have it the week in May or maybe at that workshop. Alright, anything
else? As if that’s not enough. Okay, I’ll entertain a motion on the adoption of the
revised agenda.
Bird: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we adopt the agenda with the changes as noted. Item A-2 will be
Chief Worley and item C-4 will be Gary with mud volleyball.
De Weerd: Second
Corrie: Motion been made and second to approve the revised agenda. Any
further discussion? All those in favor of the motion say aye. All ayes, motion
carried. Item 3 is Consent Agenda.
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Item 3. Consent Agenda:
5-A. Tabled from March 19, 2002: Order Granting Appeal: AP 01-00
Stop Work Order at 2340 West Franklin Road by Walt Morrow:
Tabled to July 23, 2002
B. Memorandum of Understanding with Boise and Garden City
Police Departments: Approved
C. Agreement for Professional Services – WWTP Tertiary Filter
Bypass Piping Design, Keller Associates: Approved
D. Agreement for Professional Services – N. Locust Grove Water
Line Design to Valley Life Church, Engineering Northwest:
Approved
E. Agreement for Professional Services – WWTP Road
Maintenance and Improvement, Civil Survey Consultants:
Approved
F. Addendum to Joint Powers Agreement – Meridian Rural Fire
District:
G. Approve New Beer / Liquor License Applications for Under the
Onion at 501 S.E. 1st Street: Approved
H. Approve New Beer / Liquor License Applications for Fiesta
Guadalajara at 704 E. Fairview Avenue: Approved
Bird: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
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Bird: I would move that we pull Item A and table that to July 23, 2002, and also
note that on the contracts and the Memorandum of Understanding with the Police
Department that Chief Worley be authorized to sign also and all the others the
Mayor to sign and the Clerk to attest. With that I move we approve the Consent
Agenda.
De Weerd: Second.
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Corrie: Okay. The motion been made and second to the motion. Any addition
or discussion? There are none. Roll call vote, Mr. Berg.
Berg: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Members of the Council, roll call vote.
Roll-Call: Bird, aye; De Weerd, aye; McCandless, aye; Nary, aye.
Berg: All ayes.
Item 4. Adventure Island Playground Presentation by Angela Lindig:
Presented
Corrie: Okay, all aye’s. Motion is approved to the Consent Agenda. Item #4 is
Adventureland Playground presentation, Angela Lindig. Angela?
Lindig: Hi. We can use the slide projector.
Corrie: Okay. Will, can you help her or can she---
Lindig: Well, I think I can—
Corrie: Oh, okay.
(inaudible)
Corrie: Maybe you’d better help her, Will.
(inaudible)
Lindig: I want to give each of you a copy. Bob, you must behave yourself.
(inaudible) I’ve got a helper to do the slides with. And these are all in order and
you can just start with my children. They’re the best thing to look at anyway. Are
you good right there, Sally? You’re okay. Well, I’m going to tell you all about the
Adventure Island Playground and a water splash pad and where we started and
tell you a little bit about where we’re at and where we’re going. I’d like to start
with my kids because they’re the reason that I’m here and what got me started
with this project in the first place. My son is a typically developing four year old
and my daughter happens to have multiple disabilities which is hard to tell by
looking at her but she only began walking a year ago. And she is six. The first
five years of their lives together, we had a difficult time, as a family, going to
playgrounds because of accessibility issues. First Amber didn’t walk and then
when she did start walking, she began with a walker and had a hard time getting
over bark mulch or up stairs or accessing any part of the play equipment. A
group of parents of children with disabilities, all of which happen to have their
children attending a program called Jump Start which a St. Alphonsus program,
got together and reached out to the community to look for others to get involved
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in creating a project like this. A universally accessible playground. And that is
what got us above and beyond ‘88 guidelines and creates true accessibility for
people with and without disabilities so that children can play side by side
together. We began with that small group and we broke into focus groups to
brainstorm the different areas of the community to determine the level of
accessibility to all people. We made sure we included accessibility for those that
aren’t just physically disabled but accounting for those people that may be
dealing with visual, hearing or mental issues. We then came together in a
dreaming and design workshop where we pulled together the main components
of our focus groups and we wound up with this hand drawn design. Those were
the key components that we felt we wanted in a playground. Since that time,
fortunately for all of us, the land group got involved and created a much better
looking version of the design. Hope you guys can see that okay. It's this master
plan, and I’m going to show you individual blow-ups of each of those
components. The land group has donated all of these design services up to this
point and we’re very grateful for that. I’m going to get into each of those
components in just a minute, but we wanted to fulfil a mission and a vision. And
our mission is to create a playground that will serve as a resource for all families
fully integrating children of varying abilities with opportunities to learn and play
and grow. Our vision is to enhance the lives of the children of Idaho and their
families by creating opportunities for recreation, physical fitness, mental health,
community interaction, education and social change, which is a lot for a
playground to accomplish. We then used the benefits of play. This is a
measuring tool to determine what benefits children would receive by using each
portion of the playground. The measuring tool is whether or not the playground,
as addressing social, manipulative, physical, creative, discovery and imaginative
play. I’m just going to go through a couple of the different components and not
all of them. The sound garden is a separate pod within the playground, that is
outdoor musical play equipment. Obviously, it’s going to attract all children but
most especially children that would have visual disabilities would finally have
someplace that they could play. There will be the opportunity for kids to, there
will be codes, essentially you’ll have your musical notes, you’ll have Braille, and
then you may just have a letter code to where a kid could actually get up there
and play a song by feeling or looking at the directions on each piece of
equipment. This is a mold—a company makes these and they’re designed for
your fingers skateboards or your finger bikes or your hot wheel cars and this
company can create a replica of our design so that it would sit at the entrance of
the playground and would be an actual, physical mold of the playground. So
somebody could actually feel this to understand the layout of the playground.
This is a zero depth water feature, which I don’t if any of you are aware of this
portion of the playground, but it would be separated from the actual play area
with a touchable waterfall so that, number one it isn’t a swimming pool, it’s
ground level and there jets that come up from the ground and palm trees that
shoot water and a whale spout that shoots water. So you could choose to get in
certain portions of it. If you were in, say an electric wheelchair and didn’t want to
go to that degree, you could still access the water feature with the touch of a
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waterfall that the wheelchair could go right up to. This is an area of the
playground that actually is geared more toward those kids that need that physical
stimulation and not necessarily those that are using walkers or wheelchairs. This
a rock climbing wall. And so, pretty much it's it in a nutshell. That’s what it is.
The dig is a sand area that we’ve actually been working with an artist to create
again another mold where there will be elevated sand tables, there will be a
digger for typical children to use and also one, as you can see by the example,
that a wheelchair could actually go right up to it. But the interesting thing about
our design is that it essentially will have embossed or fossils at the base so that if
a child digs far enough into the sand area, they will find hidden treasures at the
bottom. And then finally, this is the main play structure within the circle of the
main design. The Grand Voyage and Lilyput. This in itself fulfils all of the
benefits of play and will allow for wheelchairs to access at least 80% of it. It's
themed so there both a ship, a spaceship and play levels at the ground as well
as up above. Within the space area there's still the ability for children that are
physically able to climb up higher. Ours is a little different than this because
we’re including slides. We didn’t want to miss that opportunity. One thing that
you’ll from this one is that the surfacing, that’s actually poured in place
rubberized surfacing which allows wheelchairs and walkers to get over with ease.
The Grand Voyage and Lilyput actually brings me to the next segment and that is
community built. One of the committee members, Jennifer Bach, and I traveled
about 3 weeks ago to Chicago to the Kaboom Institute. The Kaboom Institute is
one that teaches community leaders how to physically mobilize volunteers and
actually go out and build a portion of the playground on a community build day.
And Jennifer and I actually physically built a playground, along with about 200
other volunteers on that Saturday. And it's a ton of fun and so the Grand Voyage
and the Lilyput portion will be community built. The vendors-we’re still in-
between. We’re having them bid on the design. But they both are known for
being able to guide us through that process. So it's not as scary as it sounds to
some, but we’re not going to just go out there and build it without all the right
people and all the right tools and the right guidance. This is actually a picture of
an actual community build that was done by the (inaudible) Institute and you can
see, you do it in rain or shine. And you do it within a day. We started at 9:00
a.m. and we did our ribbon cutting at 3:00 in Chicago. It’s not able to be played
on the same day, but you do it all in a day. A project of our size will probably
take 500-600 volunteers. This is another picture of-I wanted to show some of the
similar projects to what we’re doing. This is one that’s already been done. It's on
a larger scale than what we’re doing. It's in L.A. But we have taken from them
some of their theme play. It worked. They’ve included the ship. They’ve
included the spaceship. They’ve also included an airplane. And then further
back you can see that they’ve used the color-eye surfacing as well, which is very
expensive. So I’m going to show you an alternative on the next one which is the
Hasbro playground in Rhode Island which was completed this last August. And
they’ve used both (inaudible) in places as well as the typical mulch without
sacrificing any accessibility, which conserved their budget tremendously. So
we’re learning from who’s done what on how we can still save some money.
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Speaking of the budget, this is a copy of our budget. You’re not even showing
them that grand total. That’s probably good. This is a very preliminary budget
and, obviously, we have a lot of work to do. We’re on a two-year time line. We’d
like to do the community-build of the Grand Voyage and Lilyput within one year
from now and, hopefully finish it up within two. One of the things that I just said
that we’re doing is, we’re have the two different vendors that we’ve chosen
between actually bid on that portion, as well as their expertise in a community
build. And then after that, there’s a man named Keith Christiansen, who works
for The Center for Persons with Disabilities at the University of Utah, who has
offered to do a design review. He focuses on play spaces for children with
disabilities. And so after the design review, he’s already seen our plans, he’s
already seen our budget, and he believes that it's a very loose budget that can be
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shrunk and tightened up pretty well. I think we’re looking at a July 15 date at
having some very realistic numbers so I’m hoping that this will shrink
significantly. And that is our main plan. Does anyone have any questions? I
shrunk that up from an hour. Any questions, any comments?
Corrie: I like that project. It looks good. It's good for those types of you that
need it. It's good for us as well.
Lindig: And the great thing is, it's going to be great for the kids that even don’t
need it. There’s nothing about this playground that, when you get out there and
you look at, that you’re going to say “oh, there’s that handicapped playground”.
This design excites typical kids. When they see it, they want to know where it is.
And when.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd:
De Weerd: Again, I think, well, I’ve seen this presentation so many times I can’t
remember what groups we’ve all commanded you. But this group started out as
a small dream team and they’ve put together just an awesome facility that is just
going to be a real jewel in our 56 acre park and it’s going to be a regional type of,
okay, it's Settler’s Park. Regionally, it's going to be well known. It's one of the
first of it's kind in the state and we’re getting our capital financing team together
to start raising the capital necessary to build this. There’s some real excitement,
some very committed and dedicated people and we’re just very fortunate to have
you behind this, Angela. You’ve done a tremendous job.
Lindig: Thank you. You know, it's a passion.
De Weerd: I know.
Lindig: It's mine.
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Lindig: Just to point out, there are statistics that were given to us by one of the
committee members, Kelly Buckland, Idaho Independent Living Council. Thirty
four thousand people, and this is an underestimation, that thirty four thousand
people live within two hours of Meridian that are living with a disability. And the
Boundless Playgrounds, which is a consulting company on these types of
playgrounds, has actually shown that people will drive one to two hours to reach
such a destination. And I know, speaking just from my own experience, that if
one had been in Twin Falls or Ontario, we’ve would have driven and we still
would to get there. At least a few times a year we would go.
De Weerd: Why, I think you haven’t told everyone how many miles you put on
your car just to research.
Lindig: Yes, we’ve definitely researched them and so we’ve learned what works
and what doesn’t.
De Weerd: And this will not only help the kids with disabilities but the parents
with disabilities, to allow them to play with their kids on these kind of structures.
So it's—
Lindig: We do have two people on the committee that are both adults in
wheelchairs and both of them brought an element to the project that I would have
never thought about. That Mom and Dad can't get in there with their toddler.
And it wasn’t something I’d ever considered. You know, grandparents as well.
Nary: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: I think this is a fabulous project as well. How big of a space of the park
does this need?
Lindig: Officially, I think at this point, it's just under two acres. I don’t know if
that’s -- I’m looking at Tom over there -- I’m not quite sure. Is that about right?
Yes.
Nary: What is kind of the timetable here that you’re looking at?
Lindig: We’re looking at approximately next March to excavate and break ground
by May. We’re hoping to be able to do the community build by the first of May.
And complete the project, hopefully sooner than later, but within a year after that.
So that the main play structure can be played on throughout this next summer.
Corrie: Okay. Good. Any other questions? Nice presentation. A lot of work has
gone into this. Appreciate that. (inaudible) Thank you.
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McCandless: Bob, you don’t need that, do you?
Item 5. Meridian Ice Skating Development Fund Inc. Proposal
Presentation by Charlotte W. Catlett:
Corrie: Before we go to item number 5, I’d like to thank Mayor Gary Nancolas for
being with us tonight and he’s going to part of the presentation on the energy
audit. Welcome, Gary. Item number 5 is the Meridian Ice Skating Development
Fund, Inc. proposal presentation by Charlotte Catlett. Or Bob, I guess Bob.
Charlotte, I’m sorry, is Bob—
Alters: What I would like to do is just run through pretty much a catch-up of
where we are and (inaudible) outline of what we’re trying to do and what we’d like
to see, if possible, and then maybe respond to questions you may have. This is
still very much at a preliminary stage in many senses, although, I think that we’re
also very, very far down the line in other aspects. This all started many, many
years ago as a very scattered group of people that each had very definite ideas
about a dream that they wanted to see. Ice-skating is a unique type of activity in
that, unlike many other things, you simply can’t do it in the backyard, you can’t do
it in a playground, you can’t do it on the (inaudible). It takes a very high-tech set
of equipment and a very expensive set of equipment to do. And so it's been
something that only comes after. You don’t build a ground swell in that sense, of
people playing hockey at the local level unless you’re very lucky to be in
someplace like the southern reaches of Canada or by the northern parts of the
United States. That has not happened here. Back now quite some years ago,
we finally started an ice rink in Boise. The (inaudible) demand was tremendous.
The first year we played on an outdoor rink (inaudible) roughly, no covering, out
in the fog and the wind and everything else. And it was tremendous. We loved
it. There are in this southern corner of the state, well over 300,000 people within
easy driving distance of the City of Meridian. At this point in time, one rink.
There are many places in the northern United States where towns of 10,000
people have 3,4,and 5 rinks and then filled and used. So the whole question is,
is there a way to come together and create something here in this area. There
are, obviously, two different ways to do that. One of them is to have a purely
private enterprise on the profit-making basis come in and build. Quite frankly,
none of us that have been involved in this are interested in that. If that’s going to
be done, somebody could do that, that’s fine. Each of us, I think, brings to it a
desire to serve the community. I can’t speak for Charlotte, because she’s a lot
younger than I am, but I’m at an age where I’ve only got x number of years left.
But (inaudible) behind makes more difference to me now than it maybe did when
I was younger. So what we’re trying to do is create something that’s going to do
two things. One, it's going to serve the community in general. It's going to get
people something the simply don’t have now and some access. And number
two, I think that we’re also looking at trying to serve the youth of this community.
The old guys will get around. We’re used to driving to Sun Valley and having
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tournaments in Rock Springs, Wyoming and that kind of stuff. And we can do
that. We’ll get by. But the kids don’t have that ability. You can’t take them out of
school. You can't take them away from many other things and treat them that
way. In addition to that, one of my heartbeats, is the disabled. There is simply
nothing now for the disabled when it comes to skating of any kind. Just not
there. But those things are available. There are supportive services and
adaptive devices that can make that available to the community. And so, what
we wanted to do, was to create a non-profit. Something that could come in and
create this opportunity but was not geared to profit making. It was simply there to
run, to create, to do but nothing more. And that gives a lot of opportunities.
Number one, it has opened a tremendous amount of community support. We’ve
already had people literally ringing our phones off the hook about wanting to
come on board. Just our initial meetings, we’ve had major players in the
construction area. We have architects and engineers and (inaudible) have all
come forward. We’ve had many people that wanted to give money, give
services, give whatever. That happens when you have a non-profit. It doesn’t
happen when you have a for-profit. So the question becomes, what can we do?
Obviously, this works best if it's in some kind of a setting that is very accessible.
And one of the proposals has been that perhaps this could be at Settler’s Park.
That’s certainly a good location. We don’t have to do it there and if something
better is available, we’ll certainly do it wherever it needs to be done. But that is a
good location and we’ve had some looks at ground plans and how it could fit in
and where it would fit. One of the advantages from my point of view would be
that if it is next to a park for the handicapped, this would give the ability for
people to try to come over. They’re already there, they can take that next step.
It's a very scary thing. I do a lot of work with the handicapped. For a lot of them,
fear is the major impediment. That’s very difficult. It also gives an ability when
you have a park in that area for somebody to come, have kids maybe over
skating, go over to a park, have kids at soccer and so forth. It gives the ability to
have a very wide range of activities. So, what do we need to do? A couple of
things. Number one, we need to have some kind of (inaudible) understanding or
at least preliminary agreement of concept with the City as to how this is to work.
I think that the things I’m assuming you want and that we want are that, we’re
going to be able to run this whole thing. Not just at the set-up, but we’ll build it,
we’ll put it in place. But we’re going to continue to run it. It's not going to be
something that we walk away from after it's in place. This is long term. It's going
to be me and it's going to be my kids and my grandkids and so forth rather than
just something that we walk away from and try to hand over. We don’t expect
you to do anything other than if you provide some land or similar types of things,
that’s it. Number two, we want to do something that’s going to be long term, in
the sense that we’ll meet demand both now and in the future so it has
expandability. One of our questions we’re looking at now and one of the reasons
we don’t have more conceptual drawings, we have to decide whether we’re going
to start off with two side-by-side standard sheets or do we go immediately to
Olympic size. There are a great deal of advantages to having Olympic size.
However, it's more expensive. You’d have to build for that. So that’s a major
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front-end decision. A lot of this is going to depend on whether, after we get this
concept in place and is nailed down in some way, do the people come through.
Do we get the donations that we’ve been at least told we would get, do we get
the services actually carried through, does the construction industry as they’ve
said come through and provide a lot of things on a donational basis and that’s
our time period. If you ask me how long it's going to take, I don’t know. Because
we have to get those things in place. My belief is that it's going to be a short
process. That we really just have to these things organized, go to the
community, finish our support, figure out how much we have to have to get
started to get something in place and go and then we can build and go from
there. We don’t have to come up with the Taj Mahal at the beginning. We want
to have something that’s good and presentable and looks right and is right and
safe and so forth. But we can do things in stages. We can do things in pieces.
And that’s the advantage, that as long as you plan ahead and build right, you can
do things in phases. What all this can turn into, you could end up with, I guess
my dream would be four sheets of ice. They don’t believe me. But it's also very
possible that we might end up with some roller. That was my start, was playing
in roller hockey and there’s a very limited amount of roller ability around here.
Most of it we did out on the asphalt. Which is not a lot of fun. So we could go
that way. Could go to something totally unrelated. But it could be other types of
enterprises built on to this that don’t have anything to do with ice or with skating
at all. Finally, the thing that I want to say is, that in the past there have often
been conflicts between the ice hockey side and the figure skater side. It's kind of
an inherent thing in the past that’s been an impediment. One of the things I’m
proud of in this organization is we build to bring those aspects together. And
there's absolutely no disagreement. We’re all heading the same way. And, in
fact, there’s a lot of ability to do everything we want to do without getting in each
others way whatsoever. And actually, I think it also has opened up a lot of
strengths that each of the other organizations had that we weren’t having. So, I
think that’s the last thing is, I want to take advantage of that. That’s been fairly
unique certainly in terms of this valley and the terms of most valleys for that to
come together that way. So, where do we go from here? We would like to sit
down with whomever you deem necessary for that and see if we can negotiate
some kind of initial understanding. Something in writing to lay out the initial
terms of all of this, setting up some time periods, setting up what criteria you
want us to meet. What are our performance standards we have to meet. You
guys have some decisions to make in terms of some of the improvements out
there and some of the street side stuff that needs to be there at certain times that
we need to know so we can fit through those. And again, we want to find out
what we have to hit so we can make our challenge to the community. Tell them,
here are our deadlines, here is what we need to do. Rather than go on, I will
heed the sign and answer questions.
(inaudible)
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Corrie: How much area do you think, Bob, that you’re going to need with the
expansion and everything so that you don’t get shorted on space and want to
expand.
Alters: The area we’ve looked at on the preliminary plans looks like about five to
seven acre range and I think that’s an adequate area if the parking is in addition
to that. Where we’re looking at, there's some shared parking that actually would
be used with, I believe, adjoining school and other areas of the park and so forth.
I think with that parking plus five to seven acres we could do an excellent facility
and have lots of room for expansion.
Corrie: I would like to see you go for four (inaudible) I mean, plan on it.
Alters: We can fill four to the brim 24 hours a day if we need to.
Corrie: That’s right.
Alters: There's demand.
Corrie: Okay. Any questions from Council?
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
De Weerd: I think we have a unique advantage here having Councilman Nary on
the Council. Boise kind of looked at a similar partnership a number of years ago
and I think Bill was privy to some of those agreements and that sort of thing.
That will certainly help so I would definitely offer Councilman Nary to be a part of
that.
Nary: Mr. Mayor
Corrie: Mr. Nary, excuse me. I was unplugged here.
Nary: I’d be happy to assist in that. Mr. Alters, what type of financing are you
thinking it's going to cost? What type of dollar amounts are you folks looking at—
Alters: A little bit depending on how much we get donated in terms of outside
things, services and so forth. I think that the minimum we want to raise front end
is two million. I think that’s the base to get it in the ground and get things in
(inaudible) and using a moderate amount of donated services.
Hawkins-Clark: And how many sheets—
Alters: To do two sheets of ice.
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April 23, 2002
Page 13 of 83
Hawkins-Clark: Two sheets of and ice and to build a building?
Alters: And to have a good cover over it.
Hawkins-Clark: Thank you.
Nary: I’d be happy to help with that.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
De Weerd: Bob, have you worked with Tom and kind of done some preliminary
layouts to see how it would fit in relation to the playground and to the soccer
fields and – hopefully you have an in with the school district on that shared
parking lot idea.
Alters: Yes. We’ve had a number of meetings to look at all of that and how it
could layout and where it would go and, yes, I think that it fits very well in the spot
it's in. It's a good location. It's easy to get off the road to it. It fits well in
(inaudible) flow of the park. It's a natural doorway. It's an attractive looking thing
(inaudible) brings people in because it's not your standard park. Look, I mean,
it's a taller building and different looking than a park normally is. So I think that
helps in that sense.
De Weerd: Now, have you had a chance to talk with the school district?
Alters: No. Not at this point in time. I’ve wanted to have a little bit more definite
before I went to the—That’s really not where we’re at. A lot of places said, yes,
we’re going to help you but we want to know what’s real. We want to know
there’s something really there. It's not just talk, it's not maybe before we can
start committing. Because we’re talking people that are going to start running
cost estimates and modifying architectural plans and starting to go out and get
subs to volunteer. You know, it's a lot of work and a lot of commitment.
De Weerd: So at this point, you would like to see the commitment from Council
that this is something that we’d like to see move forward and then work with
Councilman Nary and our attorneys on the memo of understanding. Is that
correct?
Alters: Yes. That’s correct.
Corrie: With that lead in, is there anybody that would have any objections to
having Mr. Nary and our attorney work with Bob and his group on this
memorandum of understanding and get moving with the project and shake, rattle
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April 23, 2002
Page 14 of 83
and roll? Okay. Alright, it sounds good. Bill, you’ve got the lead here and our
attorney is called up—I don’t know with that two attorneys on a committee
together—
(inaudible)
Nichols: I don’t know whether this project is going to go slowly or just so rapid
we don’t keep up with it but (inaudible)
Nary: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Yes.
Nary: Mr. Mayor, I think things will go fine because only one of us is getting paid.
De Weerd: That gives us the advantage, I think.
Corrie: Okay, well, thank you, Bob. I appreciate that and we’ll have people get
going and we’ll move right along.
De Weerd: It's nice to see the two different skating communities come together
on this.
Item 6. Presentation by Ken Baker and Sue Siefferd regarding the
Energy Audit for Rebuild America / U.S. Department of Energy:
Corrie: Our next presentation will be by Sue Siefferd and also comments from
Mayor Nancolus from Caldwell on the energy audit for Rebuild America, U.S.
Department of Energy. Sue---
Siefferd: Thanks, Mayor and Council for allowing Mayor Nancolus and myself to
talk a little bit about the Rebuild Idaho program. First up, I want ask you Mayor,
how your vacation was.
Corrie: Excellent. I didn’t get stuck down there for anything that happened and I
was kind of hoping I would get, you know, something would happen to the airline
or something. Before I got on the plane, of course. But it was great. Thank you
for asking. I’m a little sunburned now.
Siefferd: Yes, I noticed that. The Rebuild of Idaho program is a voluntary U.S.
Department of Energy and the State of Idaho program which helps communities
form local partnerships whose focus is on improving their local economy, their
quality of life and the creation of local jobs. The Idaho Energy Division received
grant money from D.O.E. to administer the program and that’s really what we do.
We provide a service. We help communities write 5-year energy and resource
use action plans. We help them achieve low, to a no-cost energy savings, which
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
Page 15 of 83
can save up to 20% of your buildings energy use. We also provide energy
management software to help you track your utility data. And we can also help
design energy efficiency into your new buildings, provide technical assistance.
So, in other words, it's no cost to you. We just provide the service and we help
your buildings become healthier, more comfortable and productive by trying to
come up with different avenues that you might want to take in your 5 year energy
resource use action plan. We provide technical assistance training to the
building staff and the management for behavioral changes like turn off your
computers when they’re not in use, turn off the lights. Just real simple things.
You’d be real surprised how much energy you can save by doing that. So, it's
just a real simple program. We first start off by – we have and agreement that
we partner with the City and the different communities. We have 25 partnerships
right now. Cities, counties, school districts. I drug Mayor Nancolus here to talk
about his wonderful city and what he’s accomplished by partnering with us. And
so I’d like the Mayor to tell you a little bit about the wonderful energy savings he
is achieving.
Nancolus: She didn’t have to drag me. It was a pleasure to come over here with
Sue and also to attend your city council meeting. Thank you very much for the
opportunity of being here. Again, my name is Garrett Nancolus and I have the
privilege of serving as the Mayor of the City of Caldwell. I also want you to know
how fortunate I feel to be associated with your Mayor and Tammy. I work a lot
with them on different groups and boards and commissions and I can tell you that
they are delightful individuals. And I’m sure that is reflective on your entire
community. But I want you to know that it's been a pleasure to associate with
them. Also, Will, I’ve run into him on many occasions and he is also a pleasure
to be around. First, if I may just veer just a second, I’d like to compliment this
young lady here and her partner. What a great vision that was and the
volunteerism and enthusiasm. You can come over and do that for Caldwell if you
like. We have all kinds of ground. We’ll be happy to donate it to you.
Siefferd: Garrett?
Nancolus: Yes.
Siefferd: No.
Nancolus: I just thought I’d mention that. That’s probably not a real good way to
start a presentation. One at a time, okay. Also, these other folks with the skating
rink. What a great compliment that is to your community to have those kinds of
individuals who would be willing to step forward on a volunteer basis. And really,
that’s what this is all about, is bringing a community together and exercising your
leadership to bring about change in a community. We took a look at this a few
years ago. It turned out to be very timely. Actually, when we started looking at
the energy savings program through Rebuild Idaho, it was prior to all of the
energy controversy that has happened since that time with rolling blackouts and
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April 23, 2002
Page 16 of 83
shortages and the price of energy escalating. It was just one of those fortunate
things we had the good luck of coming in at a good time. But since that time,
we’ve recognized how really important it is that we made that move at the time
that we did. First of all, what Sue has said, is through the program, there is a lot
of resource available to you as a city to help you understand energy
conservation, the benefits to your community, the benefits to the staff that live in
those buildings. Literally live there. We don’t know how much time staff spends
in performing their services to the community. So what we looked at was an
opportunity to take a look, not only at energy savings, but to improve the
environment in which our employees worked. When you start talking about
HVAC systems and lighting and circulation and those types of things, hot and
cold versus wellness and sickness and the things that can be associated with it.
There's a lot of savings to the community, not just in energy consumption, but
also in efficiency through your employees and also just wellness. Those are
things we were very interested in when we started talking about this program.
And so we decided to join Rebuild. The City of Caldwell was the first municipality
that joined the Rebuild program in the state. And we have been very, very
pleased with our association with Sue, Ken Baker who now works for the
Association of Idaho Cities, and the entire program. So from that stand point, I
can tell you that it's been a wonderful and rewarding experience. That if you take
the step forward and join with this partnership, I know that you will receive many
benefits from them. I’d like to talk to you just a little bit about some of the
financial things that we have realized from this program. First of all, we have
gone forward, again we were the first city to do performance contracting through
this rebuild program, and here are some of the financial possibilities we have.
First of all, this is a win-win situation. Council members, I want you to know that
you’re not going to have to spend any money that you don’t have the potential,
first of all, of immediately receiving even if you don’t go forward with performance
contracting. And what I mean by that is, with the assistance of the Treasure
Valley partnership Department of Water Resources, we applied for our grant
through the Department of Energy that allows you to have your energy audit
done. And again, what that means is having professional energy savings
persons come into your community, look at your government buildings, and give
you an estimate, a very accurate estimate, of what your potential savings are,
not only through energy savings but also through, again, the efficiency and
performance of your employees. That audit is a professional grade audit and you
can choose to move forward then and take on their recommendations and go
forward with the performance contracting, or you can say, no thank you and the
grant that we’ve applied for will pay for the cost of your audit. So again, there is
a no risk, win-win situation for you to have an opportunity to take a look at your
buildings, see if there are some savings, if there aren’t or if you decide not to go
forward, you simply make application to this fund and they will pay for it for you.
Okay? So that’s the first thing I want you to know. When we joined, we didn’t
that available to us. We just believed in the program enough we were willing to
pay for the cost of the audit and move forward. Now, the rest of it is, even if a
city as small as Caldwell is, and we’re growing but we’re not growing like
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April 23, 2002
Page 17 of 83
Meridian, we don’t have the population you do yet. However, even in our small
community, we found thirty thousand dollars a year in energy savings. Thirty
thousand a year. And we decided to make an investment of about a hundred
twenty thousand dollars in upgrading our buildings from the recommendations
from this audit. So again thirty thousand dollars, hundred twenty thousand, that
means in 4 years we have paid for the savings. And from that point forward, we
are saving at least thirty thousands dollars a year, if not more. The other
important issue was, that's at today’s dollars. I don’t think any of us are under
the misconception that energy prices are not going to continue to escalate. So at
thirty thousand dollars at today’s dollars, we don’t know what that means 5 years
or 10 years or 15 years from now. But we know that those savings will multiply.
Now, here’s an opportunity. You take a project like hers or the skateboard park
or others where funding is necessary, the performance contracting side of things
allows you get a guarantee from the energy savings company that you will save
that much money so that you can, in fact, finance projects within the budget you
now have. Again, what that simply means is, is that if you’re paying a hundred
thousand dollars a year for energy now and they guarantee you 20% savings,
you now have twenty thousand dollars within your existing budget that can be
applied to other projects. And they guarantee you that those savings will
happen. If they don’t they write you a check at the end of the year for the
amount that was different. Guaranteed savings. Okay? So again it creates a
funding mechanism, if you choose to do that, for other projects. The University of
Utah, did a huge project that saved them, I don’t know how much it was, millions
of dollars. But they built an entire new boiler system and whatever on their
campus and it saved them millions. Now, obviously, we don’t expect those kind
of things are going to happen in a municipality but the City of Caldwell is saving
thirty thousand dollars a year through this program. The other thing, of course,
that we are recognizing is with the new light systems, with the new HVAC
systems, that the offices are more comfortable, the employees are very happy
with the new lighting systems and we are very happy because our employees
have been trained on how to be more energy efficient.
*** End of Side One ***
Nancolus: Again, it’s a win-win situation for everyone. So my purpose this
evening, here, not to go on any further, is just to let you know that what Sue is
talking about does work. We’ve been there, done that, and got the t-shirt. I got a
Rebuild America t-shirt when I attended the conference. We have been
extremely happy with their support, with their efficiency and their professionalism.
And we would encourage—part of our 5 year plan, our goal, was to take what we
had learned and go out and share it with other municipalities and tell you there is
a success program out there that you can be a part of. And so that’s my purpose
in being here tonight. Thank you for your time. If you have any questions, Sue
or I will certainly be happy to yield any questions you have.
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
Page 18 of 83
Corrie: Garrett, thank you very, very much. I appreciate that. Nice presentation.
Does anybody have any questions of Garrett at this time.
De Weerd: Yes, what were you selling before you became Mayor?
(inaudible)
Corrie: He does an excellent job for the Treasure Valley partnership too, I might
add.
Nancolus: Now that you’ve embarrassed me—thank you. We appreciate your
time and if you do have questions, Bob, of course, has my e-mail address or you
all know how to get a hold of me. I’ll be happy to answer your questions. And
also, Bob, if you would like to have a sit-down workshop where we can go into
more details with your Council, I want you to know I’m happy also to come back
again. I know that Sue and Ken would be happy to come back. If you have more
questions about the audit, about the performance contracting, about the program,
we would be happy to come back over and share more information with you.
Corrie: Very good.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor, I do for Sue. Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate it. Your
enthusiasm is always infectious so—If you went through such an audit and you’re
trying to phase out one building and hopefully start planning for another, how
does that work especially when you’re looking at capturing a certain percentage
of energy savings and that sort of thing. How do you measure that?
Siefferd: So when you say you’re phasing out a building, what do you mean?
De Weerd: If we were to say we would like to build a new city hall and, you
know, you would do an energy audit, certain recommendations would be made
for this building. You don’t want to put too much into upgrading this building
when you’re thinking—
Siefferd: Would you stay in the building? You don’t know if you would stay --
okay.
De Weerd: That would be the goal, not to.
Siefferd: Well, I think you would negotiate that. I mean, you can talk about that
with the auditor and tell them your situation and how far you want to go with that.
If you really definitely think you’re going to build a new building, that it would be
wonderful, too, to have it commissioned. There’s so much that we know that we
can go into to but I think that you would negotiate that. They could do an audit
and you could just do a few things. Say to change out the lights or just a few
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April 23, 2002
Page 19 of 83
things you might want to do instead of going, you know, like HVAC, heating,
ventilation, and air-conditioning.
De Weerd: We do have other buildings and I do like the behavioral part in
looking at different tasks or habits that we have that could also be of savings.
But I just wondered, until we know as a city how we want to move forward, how
that would work for future plans?
(inaudible)
Worley: Tammy, if I may? Mr. Mayor? Tammy? We had a situation exactly just
like that with our new police station. We did not have our old police station
audited. Okay, we just simply said we’re going to – now our building, of course,
was a much older and more dilapidated. This is a nice building still. With ours,
we chose not to have that building audited. However, on the reverse side of that,
what we learned through the energy savings program, again helped to us to
design and build what was just awarded as the number 3 project in the northwest
with our new police station and make sure that it was as energy efficient as it
could possibly be. And those were some recommendations that also came
through their program and from the professionals that they work with. So, we
didn’t have it audited but they certainly helped us design and understand the
importance of energy efficiency in a new building and make sure that we did it
with the construction management team and also did it with having it
commissioned. And those things, in turn, saved us huge amounts of money from
an energy stand-point and (inaudible)
Corrie: Anybody else (inaudible). Okay. Sue, Garrett, thank you very much.
We’ll be getting back with you very shortly.
Garrett: Would it hurt your feelings if I went home and watched the Jazz game?
st
Item 7. Discussion with ACHD regarding E. 1 / Main / Central /
Waltman Intersections: Presented – Need to Meet with ACHD
Commissioners
Corrie: Oh, yes. That’s all right, thank you Garrett. Thank you very, very much.
Somebody’s playing a tune. Is that you? Okay. Our next item on the agenda is
discussion with ACHD regarding East First, Main, Central and Waltman
intersections. So at this time I invite the two ACHD or one or both. One, alright.
Terry Little and if you want to intercede or talk to him, you’re certainly welcome
to.
Little: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Council. I have with me Larry Sale, our business
manager, liaison, and with the Highway District and Larry White, who is our
consultant (inaudible) project at East First, Central, Waltman, Meridian. And I
would like to use the overhead for a few minutes here. Go back to the history of
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April 23, 2002
Page 20 of 83
the intersection. It was a major problem back in l992 and was not signalized at
the time and we knew we had a big problem to figure out because it was likely a
5-way intersection, ultimately, with the kind of layout. With Waltman, at that time
didn’t have very many houses on it, still doesn’t. Didn’t have (inaudible)
development, still doesn’t. But when that went on that side, it certainly had the
potential to really create havoc because of the intersection layout. And a 5-way
intersection doesn’t work from a congestion standpoint and from a geometry
standpoint. As you know, Boise Avenue, University Drive, Capital Boulevard, are
one of those. And if you drive through it, you’ll kind of see that they did some
strange things to make it work. We looked at some ultimate concepts, at that
time, some interim solutions. Let me just show you what those were. By we I
mean, ACHD hired a consultant, CH2M Hill to do a study. We had public
involvement, we came out to City Council at that time and got the City Council’s
involvement on it in 1993 when we finished the study and their approval. It’s
been a long time ago. This was one of the alternatives that actually let me make
sure I get through these in the right way. Let me start through-I’ve got the
ultimate one we ended up with here. Maybe kind of show you some of them to
deal with. The future Waltman Lane, that one brings it in up to the north. I think
I’ve got copies for all of the Council here so let me—This one brought Waltman in
up on Meridian and then brings Meridian right in. It did involve a lot of
construction, taking out mini-storage and Kentucky Fried Chicken and it created
a major intersection at the –very major potential congestion point right at the
throat where you enter Meridian there right at key intersection which was also a
concern with that one. Another issue that kind of happening at the same time
was the Landing subdivision developing which is the west half of that section. If
you look off to the left there you’re all familiar with the Landing subdivision which
accesses the area from Linder Road, and some way to get them out. They have
one road in and out of there, even today and not a very desirable situation. This
one also had some pretty major impacts with the Redlin Studio and the Mini-
Storage and also it cuts Meridian off and makes it a cul-de-sac right there. So it
brings Meridian Road in, a new road, which was not built at that time, which is
the extension of Corporate. It is built now just north of Bolo’s. And that brings all
st
the heavy traffic from Meridian together with East 1 and then, of course, from
st
East 1 down to the Interstate, you have very heavy traffic in that one. You do
have a potential for major build-out on the west side of that street that looks like
the build out on the east side of the street. A third alternative was to bring in
st
another road and leave Meridian and East 1 like it is and bring in another road
to access that site--Johnson Lane in between Waltman and the freeway. Of
course, that was not very acceptable to the State, which has access control all
the way up there and it wasn’t very operationally good to throw another signal in
that close. It just wasn’t a very desirable alternative at all. The alternative
number 4 was the one, actually, that ended up being the preferred alternative.
Essentially brings the southbound Meridian continues pretty much as is, down
st
past Kentucky Fried Chicken and is able to access East 1 on the right turn only
movement. You can see the schematic that shows the movements there, so it's
only a right turn only at this point and a right turn in. To get into this area you
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
Page 21 of 83
come up here and you have double turn lanes up at the Corporate intersection.
You come in like this, either south, say into these or over here and then down
into this area, some type of schematic down here. This is conceptual down in
this area. This would be a collector in but these would be local, commercial
streets, commercial, industrial, whatever. They would not be systems streets.
Their location would really be dependant on the property owners when they
developed, what their preference was and what worked with the system. But
would also with their desires as well because they would be paying that aspect of
the system. This worked well in terms of moving traffic because it's only a t-
intersection at Central. Only Central gets the signal. The other side with the
right turn only is just a right turn in and out that’s separated by an island and
doesn’t take any green time from the signal. So this has worked very well for
keeping congestion out of the lower intersection, or the Central intersection. Up
at Corporate it had double left turns to handle the turns. One turn would just
continue across and then on up Meridian and one would be either straight over or
left turn back down into that area to the south. The fifth alternative also cuts off
Meridian Road and brings all of the Meridian Road traffic in at Corporate into
st
East 1 and then down Corporate and also ends up providing all of direct access
into the intersection. It's a lot like alternative one and two on that regard. Let me
just them on for comparison. It's not one, it's two, I think that’s closest. Yes, two
and somewhat similar type of strategy there with Meridian being dead-ended, at
that point. Anyway, alternative four was, what was approved, it—a couple of
reasons you have to approve and run with something, is because properties
develop and if we don’t get the right-of-way with some plan, we don’t get any
plan implemented ultimately or some incredible cost. As a result of that, later on,
in the mid to late 1990’s, we bought and built the section, the east-west section of
st
Corporate between Meridian and East 1. So that exists and we have right-of-
way on that here. We don’t have it all but we do have a portion of that right-of-
way back there. Larry, you can jump in if I stick my foot in it here, my mouth.
You can kind of help me. This is what somewhat got us to this point. Also, part
of the strategy is to provide access to the Landing subdivision. There are a
couple of local streets that poke right in to the west side here. Come over here,
there’s a local street up in here and then there’s one way down here. The idea
would be to bring them in at an indirect manner. We would have to put some
impact fee or some ACHD money into those kinds of connections because
they’re benefiting the residential property that’s already built and coming through
a commercial area. A portion of that would be a shared responsibility on that
thing. But that was another issue there, providing access, that’s kind of how we
got to this point. I think I’ve covered most of the—Oh, the collector was moved
from Waltman up to Corporate and you might recall the extreme controversy at
the time the Landing was being developed and some of the early concepts where
we have a collector, it's on the compass map or the APA map at that time. We
just bring the traffic right on out Waltman Lane. Well, it didn’t work very well from
st
a traffic standpoint because, you know, that intersection is so close to East 1
where it comes in at Meridian and it certainly didn’t work well from a
neighborhood standpoint. Those people that have lived there for the past 30-40
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April 23, 2002
Page 22 of 83
years did not want new residential traffic coming through them. So part of the
plan also, that fit in with this concept of, bring the main collector in from the north
and have a way out to the freeway as a reliever. What is does, it allows us not to
st
have as many lanes on East 1. No it only—two lanes southbound. If you bring
the traffic of Meridian in north of there, then you need a third lane southbound.
So it means you’re expanding into existing developments and so forth. There’s a
lot of ramifications to each one of these things. It kind of brings us to the current
project. We had a number of—and I might mention, that there was differing
opinions on these concepts when we went through the process. The property
owners, based on where they lived or where they owned property or something.
One benefited one alternative and one another so naturally they favored the
alternative that was more desirable for their property. We’ve had a lot of
discussions with the property owners or potential developers on these properties.
Of course, they’d like to see one of those other alternatives implemented and
have a mirror image of the Win-Co, Home Depot type of development, Shari’s
and McDonald’s type of thing over there. This isn’t as attractive for that.
Anyway, that is how we’ve arrived at this point. We’d like to discuss that before
we talk about the current project, ask questions or what’s preference. I’m here to
answer questions and provide any light that I can and get your input on things.
Corrie: Who wants to be first? Assuming we have questions.
Bird: I have none.
Corrie: Mr. Nary. Let’s see what your proposal (inaudible)
Little: I would mention, the package you have also has two interim pictures in
there. We built the first one. We put the signal in and just improved the signal
minimally. Interim 1A, 1B has essentially this kind of thing on the east side.
Basically, we’re going form 1A to an ultimate design here rather than building two
interim designs. With that I’ll—
De Weerd: The last two sheets in your packet—
Little: Yes, the last two sheets have the interims that were suggested under this
study. If you want other parts of the study, there are traffic numbers and things
like that, that I left out of there. I just gave you the concepts and the
recommendations and so forth. This brought us to where we are. We have two
projects proposed to accomplish this work. One is to signalize Corporate and
st
East 1 because the first thing is, when you restrict access to the other area, it
means you need a way to get in there. The Corporate traffic signal provides that
and a double left-turn. I might mention, that the stickiness of this was, that the
development with this intersection so close, was in right here now, that it works
with the Waltman residents, the little traffic you have. The State has their sand
pile down there and so forth. If you start adding some commercial in there, it
really would fail instantly and the kind of penalties you’d have to place, turning-
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
Page 23 of 83
wise, would penalize the old time residents there. So it would not be very
palatable to make everybody turn right coming out of there and go down to the
freeway, for instance every time they want to leave there. That would be the
alternative, right now, which wouldn’t work very well. This project, as I
mentioned, is a two-phase. This was in 2002 to do this intersection. Signalize it
and make some moderate improvements and get double turns.
De Weerd: Terry? You can take that microphone right in front of our attorney. If
you would, yes.
Little: Thank you. The way that we have this project programmed and budgeted,
was to do the Corporate intersection signal in this year, this budget year 2002,
which ends September 2002 and 2004 to do this work at the south intersection.
As we got into this, we found there was more work here than we had anticipated
and although the budget for the two phases is within what we had intended,
there’s more in this year than what we had budgeted for. So we’re looking at that
right now and questioning, should this be held off until we do this or just another
year before we do this or should they both be done together and just phase it
right immediately one after the other. I know traffic engineers say, well, I’d like to
see this done before Franklin’s done. Those are some of the issues we’re facing.
Larry White may have some things to add to that. Larry do you want to come up
and add anything. So it really is up in the air a little bit for schedule right now as
to where we go. This is the concept-it’s double turns coming here and then this
one basically one of them just continues right on up to Franklin. This would work
fairly well because, as you recall, the through traffic from Meridian would then
continue on. The heavy movements don’t conflict. They could get green lights at
the same time. The lighter movements here, the left turn, the throughs, those
would have to interrupt the signal. But this could be timed and work in tandem
with this signal over here. What happens here, this is a right turn in to this area
or a right turn out toward the freeway. There’s no crossing in here. It brings us
back into Waltman Lane. Like I said, from here on the streets could vary,
depending on the development and what works out. We didn’t have a strong
opinion. It's just that we had to make a connection here somewhere back and
get this intersection to a decent point. A lot of the concerns that have come in,
have been more with these property owners. They would prefer better access.
We did hear one over here about the idea if you get down here then you can’t
come across to them. You’d have to cut off early and they might lose customers
over that. That kind of concern. So those are the biggest things that we have
heard along the way in the process.
Corrie: Terry, I had a question. Coming in on Meridian Road and making that
st
turn to go onto East 1 Street and the other one goes up Waltman Lane and
makes that—are you going to signalize that? Eventually, there’s going to be a
lot of traffic coming and going out of that.
Little: Now, this one?
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April 23, 2002
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Corrie: Yes.
Little: Or this one?
Corrie: No. The first one right there.
Little: This one. We did not anticipate it because the only heavy movement is
this. The rest of them would be just what traffic is in and out of here. You just
have to worry about that one. We did not anticipate that. This definitely would
have to be signalized when this is extended but the way our numbers show, that
works pretty well just because it's shielded from everything but one direction of
travel.
Corrie: But eventually there’s going to be a lot of cars come out that make-up
there so you’ll have to change that whole schematic at a later date, right?
Little: There’d have to something here, coming to the south from this area and
that would be kind of the lifesaver for that, I guess. Pressure relief valve there.
Corrie: Any other questions?
Bird: I have none.
Nary: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: So, Mr. Little, if I understand what you’re saying is that like in this
particular, this intersection, this is a signalized intersection here.
Little: Correct.
Nary: So the anticipation is the traffic flow is either going, if it wants to go to
Franklin, they’re going to come here and make those turns. The traffic that
comes down Franklin, is either going to be going to get to Main Street here or to
come through this way, correct, there shouldn’t be much traffic here. Is that the
intent? Someone’s making a left through here, that’s not going to obstruct traffic
this area by the KFC.
Little: Right. They’ve got 3-4 cars and then a refuge or a couple of cars in a
refuge there. I don’t think we had a demand for enough anticipated if you could.
If we did, we’d have to come back here and make a right turn lane to get them
out of traffic. But that’s anticipated not to be real great. If their destination is
there and they’re coming from this way, that would be a normal way to come. Of
course, from Meridian Road, there would be an even cleaner way to get in.
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
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Some would prefer to take that route just to avoid having to make a left turn,
probably.
Nichols: Isn’t there already some development along here now? I think we’ve
approved a tire place right here because there’s parking over here, I think. So
this street is anticipated to go through at what point?
Little: Larry, do you have a comment on that? He’s better at the development
type questions than I am.
White: Mr. Mayor, Council members, Mr. Nary. We have an agreement with the
owners of the property between Meridian Road, or west of Meridian Road that at
the time they develop they will provide the right-of-way and construct the road
west. Corporate Drive will be constructed west. If Council remembers the Plat of
th
Gold subdivision, Corporate connects with 5 street coming in from the north
coming off Franklin. But it also has an extension of Corporate Drive that bends
off to the south. Corporate Drive would cross Ten Mile Creek at that point and
then intersect again with Waltman off of any of our maps here. That would be
the area that pick up the developing area south of Waltman and would pick up
connections into Landing subdivision. Did that answer your question?
Nary: Yes. I was just looking at this timetable as to how long are we looking at
that street being extended.
White: It’s really dependent upon the timing of the property owners, whether they
want to develop their property.
Nary: Because, what I heard Mr. Little say was, until that was extended that was
not going to be a signalized intersection? Or did I misunderstand?
Little: I said if it was extended, we’d need to signalize it immediately. I think it's
probably pretty well tied in with that. I don’t see the need until this thing is really
extended probably to signalize that. You’re probably—
Nary: So would this be intended to be like a stop sign? Because I’m thinking
you’re going to have basically all the traffic that currently backs up here at 5:00 is
now going to be here or further down at the junction of Franklin. But when
Franklin is under construction, it's going to be here. So all that traffic turns in
here, and what's here, a stop sign?
Little: Stop sign. You’ve got a point there in terms of the turning there. We
might—
Nary: If it's a stop sign, one car at a time, they back up here, and it's going to be
nightmarish, just to get through here. It's not going to any better than this but
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
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here you have a signal and you get 15 cars through a signal and get all that
traffic off of here. Here, you’ve got the signal here, but not there.
Little: I think that would have to be, either the extension of this or that, we’ll have
to signalize that. I was in Glenwood this morning with a flashing red light so you
don’t get very many cars through. It's the same effect of a signal out. Oregon
does signs right turn permitted without stopping but we don’t have that
convention in Idaho to do—Larry do you have an answer for that?
White: (inaudible)
Little: Okay. That’s right. Probably with our own staff so it doesn’t show up in a
budget but, yes, we’ve got the poles and all that in there. I had forgotten that.
Actually, the striping is all done even.
Corrie: You probably wouldn’t have a lot of traffic going north on Meridian Road
anyway except what's coming out of that (inaudible) lane. Because that’s the
st
only way they can go in there outside of coming down East 1 , making a turn,
and go back again the way they came. Which is not very likely. You’d be better
off to turn on Corporate and go west. They don’t have a lot of traffic so they can
make that turn pretty fast to go in through and clear that road out there pretty
quickly (inaudible) Central.
Nary: Have you received, Mr. Little, have you folks received a lot of comment
about this. This is obviously a little bit different than what we’re used to so has
there been much public comment on this change?
Little: Larry, do you have a comment on what we’ve received thus far?
White: (inaudible)
Little: Other than those who are looking at developing, these parcels right here,
right there, we didn’t get much. Got one e-mail from Hawkins-Smith on concern
on it not being as direct access on across Meridian. We have not had a lot.
Fairly good attendance at the business hour at least. I think (inaudible)
Sale: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Sale.
Sale: I apologize for not identifying myself for the record earlier. My name is
Larry Sale, Business Relations Officer of the Highway District. And our business
and response to Mr. Nary’s question, at the information meeting and prior to that,
I had spoken individually with the owners of two potential developers of
properties south of Waltman. I spoke with Mr. Redlin, Redlin Studios, spoke with
the owners and the managers of the Republic Storage and the owner of that
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
Page 27 of 83
truck store. Saw all of those at the informational meeting and they were, I think I
could say, pleased with the concept. Mr. Redlin had concerns about how he’s
going to change his access. We may help him get access off the new Waltman
Road rather than his current access off Meridian Road. That was his only
concern.
Bird: That would be nice.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
De Weerd: I guess I would also agree the access into Corporate Park is really
difficult. I guess, if you can’t go across there by the Chevron and McDonald’s, it
takes you over by Wendy’s and Bolo’s. But I don’t see a whole lot there either.
How do get over to the east side of Main St.?
Sale: We’d typically take this route to go there or you’d also have the alternative
to get in the left turn lane.
De Weerd: So you have to turn on to Main and then turn on to Central.
Nary: You’d go left or right off of central. You just don’t go across Central to
Meridian Road.
De Weerd: So you can go straight onto Corporate.
(inaudible)
Little: It’d probably be wise to have a sign here, no access to Central or
Corporate Park, you know, this way, trail blaze it, just a clean road sign. I
understand signs are an issue here.
De Weerd: Just don’t put a bucket on it. I don’t think people read sign 60 feet in
the air anyway. Traffic signs.
(inaudible)
Sale: Is there a preference on timing by the Council, in terms of,--as we are
looking at timeframes on these things. Overland is in 2003, Franklin is in 2004,
the 2-mile sections between Meridian and Eagle.
Corrie: My suggestion would be to have it done before 2004. Really, because
you’re going to have a mess on Franklin Road if you don’t have that done and
ready to go where they can come in and go out. If they come down and that’s all
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
Page 28 of 83
torn up out there, they’re going to pick their own way and it's going to be pretty
ugly.
Sale: That’s what our traffic engineer said.
Little: Same thing. There’s two key ways into Meridian and if you have Franklin
under construction and not have this working—
Corrie: Who is staff – okay Mrs. Stiles, Miss Stiles, excuse me.
Stiles: Mr. Mayor I had a few questions for Terry. I am really concerned about
not having a light there at Waltman and also the lack of access to any of that
area. We did lose a significant, major employer and multi-million dollar project
south of Waltman due, in part, to the fact that we didn’t have adequate
infrastructure for the roads there. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that that
Transportation Department site could become a park site or something at some
point. As far as being able to trade sides or them to just give that to us, you
know, I’m thinking way in the future, but still a possibility. This seems a little bit
myopic in just looking at that area, I know before you some other connections
and things, and the John Goade property, when that came through, the access
wasn’t a particular concern. I know that a condition of our approval of that plat
was that they bond for half of the cost a bridge over Ten Mile Creek because the
ACHD said the cost would be borne entirely by the people south of Ten Mile
Creek. I guess since the city has made their decision, ACHD has backed out
saying, oh, no, you don’t have to do anything there because it’ll be the
responsibility of that south person, south property owner. This will be essentially
a dead-end lane. I don’t know where-how long ago was it that you actually talked
to the residents down along Waltman Lane?
th
Little: Larry. What's that? April 4? Why don’t you come up to the podium,
Larry? Larry White is our Design Engineer. He is over at Six Mile Engineering
and he was at the public meeting, I know.
White: Mr. Mayor, Council. I’m Larry White. I’m with Six Mile Engineering. And
th
the public meeting was held on the 4 of April.
Little: And we had some people from Waltman Lane.
White: Quite a few.
Little: The sign was put out there for advertising the meeting, I believe.
st
White: And they were concerned how they would access East 1 and we
explained that and it seemed to go pretty well.
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
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De Weerd: Were those people basically property owners or tenants, do you
have any idea?
White: Tenants. Residential tenants. There were some property owners and
developers. I think Larry addressed that earlier.
De Weerd: Probably 90% of those property owners have been in wondering how
they’re going to get access because they want to develop it commercially. It is
designated as commercial. Actually, about ¼ mile south of Waltman is already
zoned commercial. I guess, I don’t see any real plan for getting the connections
through there. And again, that place where Waltman connects into Meridian
Road, I think is going to be an immediate problem once that develops. And it's
kind of a chicken and egg thing because we can’t get people to develop the
property because they don’t have adequate access and, you know what I mean.
White: Sure. And we noticed that during the (inaudible) Highway District is
aware of that. Corporate needs to be extended and connect to Waltman to
provide that access.
De Weerd: So, is that being planned somehow or are you looking at a divided
way. It will be a project, I would imagine that it’s going to require the Highway
District to put on it's schedule and get it into—
White: We made some progress, at one time. Mr. Sale has got some thoughts
on that. I know with one of the property owners but it's not in right-of-way at this
point. I checked the right-of-way today and all the right-of-way along the north
and south side of Waltman appeared to be intact. I didn’t see a corridor through
there.
Sale: Mr. Mayor, City Council, Larry Sale again. There is no right-of-way for
Corporate currently between Meridian Road and Mr. Goade’s property. When
Mr. Gold’s plat was or is recorded, he dedicated the right-of-way for Corporate
Drive through his property. The Highway District and Mr. Goade have an
agreement that would fund ½ the crossing of the Ten Mile canal. The Highway
District and Mr. Goade would share that cost. The developers-actually this
revised alignment of Waltman was proposed by two property owners south of
Waltman as a means of accessing Meridian Road. Their property is near
Meridian Road and Waltman. But as Mr. Little said, it would take a network of
local streets to make the whole system. Corporate Drive and Meridian Road
would be the backbone of that system. But would require some local streets that
developers would construct as they develop the property to make the whole thing
work.
Little: Mr. Mayor, Cheri. This would work well from interstate access. As you
come in here, you can’t turn left. You come up here, make a left, down here
you’re right turn in, right turn out at this intersection from the interstate. From the
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April 23, 2002
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interstate access standpoint, it's much easier than local type than this kind of left
coming in from the north. There are concerns that it does send them through
another signal or two, another couple three minutes to get in, real easy to get out,
and they’re concerned they couldn’t nail down a hotel or something. They didn’t
think they’d get financing on it because of the extra access restriction getting in.
It's certainly from a safety and from an efficiency standpoint, right in, right out at
that intersection would handle a lot of cars.
Nary: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: I guess you can’t please everybody, Mr. Little. It does seem to me what
we all were doing is really pushing this traffic that’s currently here to there and
making anybody who lives over here drive back here and this way to go—if you
live here and you want to go to Win-Co, you have to drive down this road over
through this signal, that signal and then make a left turn over here to get to
Winco. That sure seem like kind of a (inaudible) way to get to the store if I lived
over here. These businesses all, I guess their comment was, they like this
change. This makes it much more inaccessible to get to Redlin, Enterprise Rent-
A-Car, any of these other ones because you, again, have to go down here and
drive back the same way. I guess my only thought is, I understand you’re trying
to please the majority of the folks and I don’t know whether or not moving this
traffic from this backup point here to this backup point here is that much better
but it certainly makes it much more complicated to get anywhere in here. I don’t
know how anybody who lives in here would want that. I don’t understand why
they would think that’s better. That seems more complicated to me than what's
there now.
Little: Mr. Mayor, Mr. Nary, let me just kind of address one of the things which-I
agree with you-it isn’t super convenient for local, short trips for local purpose. In
the numbers, we took the current volumes and expanded them by the build-out,
based on the Meridian comp plan just in the immediate area and we ended up,
currently, at 38,000 a day. That brought it up to 48,000 a day. We now have the
compass 20-25 numbers and that’s 52,000 or 53,000 a day is what compasses
are projecting here. If you make that a t-intersection, it does make that a lot
simpler and run much more efficiently for getting in and out of here and it moves
the concern further from the freeway and affects less traffic and that. It is
definitely favoring the majority of the traffic, in terms of 50,000, is more traffic
than we’ve got on any road, probably in Idaho other than the interstate. Even
Eagle Road is just getting there now. Broadway was before. The Park Center
Bridge was at 50,000. So we’re looking at an awful lot of traffic in this corridor.
And that has 22,000 on the Ten Mile north of the new interchange, it's estimated.
So that takes into account the Ten Mile interchange and still looking at 50,000,
52,000, 53,000 in this corridor.
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April 23, 2002
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Nary: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: I recognize, too, Mr. Little that probably the majority of the comments is
going to be after you build it. Again, I understand what the big picture is. If I
wanted to develop an industrial site or a hotel or manufacturing business of some
sort in this area, I’d still have to have all my delivery trucks drive back down and
then back up this road just to get there. It just seems like that’s a much more
inaccessible use of that. Probably, like you said, it works for the 5:00 traffic but it
sure doesn’t seem to work very effectively for delivery vehicles and the like that
this area might want to be able to get to that. Like I said, if you have to drive in a
circle and drive backwards, it just doesn’t seem like it makes much sense. That’s
probably why I’m not a traffic engineer.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
De Weerd: I think there's a lot of logic to what Cherie is suggesting. This is
maybe blowing this area up a little bit and looking at it in terms of the square mile
and see what our comp plan suggests and the goals of the City with
redevelopment efforts going on in Old Town, what Corporate Park is going to
envision—
*** End of Side Two ***
De Weerd: -- alternate way. I just cannot even imagine living over there and
having only one way, one out. You talked about inconveniencing those people.
Well, shoot, you can live up to ¼ mile to that road and still have to go clear out to
Linder to get anywhere. This is not an inconvenience after looking at stuff like
that and preserving what ACHD has done today, so that we can maybe tie all of it
in together. This is the entry way corridor and I appreciate that you’re preserving
a lot of that. You’re moving traffic, which is what that area needs to be. We also
have commitments with the land-use commercially and that sort of thing. We
can’t kill that area because of how we’re going to design their street. So if we
can blow it up and maybe look at it and look at our uses, maybe we need to take
a look at our comprehensive plan and what our uses are designated to be, too, to
try and help solve whatever issues we’re going to create with the traffic patterns
in that area. This is the best time to do it. I’m sorry, I can’t look at it one piece at
a time because this is the piece that ties everything together. It will ultimately
affect your intersection down at Franklin and Main. It certainly affects the
intersection at Meridian and Franklin. It’s going to have huge impacts both east
and west of Main Street south of Franklin. We do need so see how all of those
are going to connect together and maybe come up with an idea with the property
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
Page 32 of 83
owners, with the tenants, with our planners to kind of envision how that’s all
going to work even at build-out.
Corrie: Terry
De Weerd: Can we do that?
Little: We did that in 1993.
Corrie: Terry, can that whole intersection be bigger and still have your left turns
in there and go straight across as well? Rather than ratcheting all that down,
have the left turn in and then go back on to Meridian Road and coming down and
across. I mean, it's –I’m sure you’re not reinventing the wheel here. A very large
intersection there that you’ve got a large amount of cars coming in there going
south, going north, going west and going east. I mean, it might take a mammoth
intersection (inaudible) to be controlled. As Mr. Nary said, I’m not an engineer
but I’ve seen some very big intersections that control, in California, that much
traffic and still have a 4-way deal there. How they do it, I don’t know or whether it
costs a lot of money to buy the right-of-way for all that but may lose some
businesses there but –I don’t know—
Little: Mr. Mayor, you can add lanes and get capacity. One of the issues,
though, on this kind of connection, it would just have to be a right turn in and out,
in order, if you allow the left turns up here for those kind of volumes, this would
be like an island down through here and this could be a right turn in and out. But
the access to that area is worse off than it was. Now it has to go to the interstate
and look for a place to come back to get in and out. Or depend on a connection
to the north. So, this would have to be moved back somewhere to where it could
have full access in order for that to work. You certainly would be into some
issues in terms of widening these legs with Kentucky Fried Chicken and Bolo’s
and the Chevron Station and McDonald’s. There’s a lot of impediments to buying
right-of-way from businesses. The Legislature approved the business damages
law a few years ago which says, you buy the land, you pay for all of the
improvements on the land, and then you pay for the impacts on the business for
5 years, which you thought you just paid for with all the improvements on it. For
instance, if you took away parking, you pay for the parking they lost, well, then
you end up paying for 5 years of business damages. That really is something
we’re trying to avoid in every way we can because we can’t even find out what
that number is from them because they’re not required to reveal that to us, what
the profits are. Anyway, that’s a possibility but you’d end up being back here
somewhere to get that leg in. I think some of those alternatives showed that
thing coming up here. And you’d also need, let me just add to that, 2 lanes on
Meridian, northbound. If you’re going to make 2 left turn lanes, to make it really
work, you need 2 receiving lanes that would take that. So you do end up with
some pretty substantial improvements for quite a distance to make that function.
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
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Corrie: Any other comments? Shari?
Stiles: I didn’t want to belabor the issue but back to the John Gold bridge
situation. I just wanted Larry to be aware that, even though he did write a letter
agreeing that the ACHD would share in the cost of that bridge with John Gold
because they own part of that subdivision, Gary Anselman has told the City and
John Gold that they’re not going to require anything and ACHD is not going to
participate in any way, shape or form on that bridge. But the last thing we had in
writing was from Larry. He does come up with the issue that John Goade’s
property does end slightly down the slope and it doesn’t go to the center line. His
property boundary doesn’t go to the center line at Ten Mile Creek. So as Gary is
saying we can’t require John Goade to participate in that, yet it's not fair to say
ACHD is not going to participate in it and if that property owner to the south
wants to develop, he’ll be 100% responsible to build it. I guess, just to make sure
it's on your radar screen that John Goade will probably come back again
because he doesn’t like those conditions that were placed on him. It looked like
in one of your overheads, that it actually showed a connection road coming on
his easterly boundary to Waltman Lane. It would be nice to be able to work at
acquiring some right-of-way for that roadway system prior to it being fully
developed and having to displace more businesses. So, that’s just for the
record.
Little: Mr. Mayor, Shari. Thank you. I’m not aware of the details on that. I know
in terms of exactions, we are much more careful than we ever have been. I
spent, personally, 8 days in court last year on a case. When it's off-site, built to
benefit someone else, we are really careful in that. I think the City has more
latitude, more mission statement to quality of life, connectivity, things like that,
that may be able to exact things that we can’t or, at least our attorney tells us we
can’t. Our experience is leaning that way. It's not that we don’t want it but it's not
fun in court and don’t really want to lose. We have so many things in the past
that might come back to haunt us too, to have to pay back to when you get into
exaction issues.
Nary: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: Just one more question, Mr. Little. On this (inaudible) particular area
going to be a widened intersection or are we going to lose what little green space
that’s kind of in this area now? The reason I ask is we’ve had discussions
previously with this property owner about improving this green area here since
it's sort of our front door to the city. Is this intended to be widened more so we’d
be losing some of that?
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
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Little: I don’t believe that there’s a lot coming off there. We’re staying outside
the property line here. There's a big tree standing-did Larry White leave-Oh, I’m
sorry Larry, do you know detail (inaudible)
White: The large tree appears to be in the sidewalk. The post sidewalk. So
that’s being identified now to be removed. But, as far as right-of-way takes,
they’re very minimal there as far as whether there's going to be landscaping and
sod between the back-up sidewalk and the existing property line, that hasn’t
been determined yet. We’re still in preliminary design.
Little: Thank you.
Corrie: Okay. Any other questions? With anybody from ACHD?
De Weerd: Where do we go—
(inaudible)
Corrie: When do want a next meeting? To get all this, hopefully, ironed out.
Little: Do you want this in the context of a joint meeting with our commission, do
you want me to come back? I’m at your pleasure as far as—
Nary: I’d like to have a joint meeting so that everybody’s on the same playing
field and know what our concerns are and we know what yours are and we can
see if we can iron them out.
Little: Okay.
Corrie: I guess the next would be to get with your staff and our staff and set up a
time. The sooner the better.
Little: I’ll carry that back, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for having me out tonight.
Corrie: Thank you, Terry, I appreciate your concern and it's very helpful to us.
Yes. Thank you, Larry. You too, Larry. Appreciate it.
Bird: Larry, Larry and Terry.
De Weerd: Hey, isn't that a commercial?
Item 8. Department Reports:
A. Mayor’s Office:
1. Appointments to Historical Preservation Commission:
Approve James Moran, Tony Hickey, Walt Lindgren
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
Page 35 of 83
Corrie: Okay. The next is the Department Reports. First, is Mayor’s office,
Departments to Historical Preservation Commission. Council, I’ve added one
more to the list. I gave you an outline resume of two that met with the committee
and there is one more that would like to be on that committee that they need.
That is an architect by the name of Walter Lindgren, has agreed to be on that
commission as well. He will send you a resume if you so desire as well but I
thought maybe if you want to do it all in one night, you can. The three
appointments that I would like to have the Council approve is, one is Jim Moran,
two is Tony Hickey and three is Walter Lindgren, who is the architect on the
commission. Those are the three names I would submit to you for addition to the
Historical Preservation Commission. Any question that I might answer? I’d be
happy to give it a try.
Bird: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: This fills up your appointments?
Corrie: It does on the Historical Preservation Committee.
Bird: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: If there are no more questions I’d like, oh, do you have a question?
De Weerd: What are the length of their term commitments and – is this
staggered –
Corrie: It's staggered, yes, I don’t have them with me but there’s some that’s
being filling in and they will be filling in to the terms of the others. I can get that to
you probably tomorrow if that’s soon enough. They’re staggered, every so often.
They will be filling in for the ones that have resigned and they can be re-
appointed for another term as well.
De Weerd: Mayor, just one more thing. I don’t know if this commission has been
meeting but we do want to make sure, now that they have a full commission and
probably can start meeting again, that they adhere to the open meeting laws and
post their agendas and minutes and get those with City Clerk and that sort of
thing.
Corrie: I know they’re having meetings. Will, did they give you notice when
they’re having their meetings and that? (inaudible) As well, or (inaudible) Okay,
we will do that then. Frank – no I’ll ask you that later – yes, we can make sure
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April 23, 2002
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the commission – I thought they were, they’re all open meetings but they can
have them give it to the Clerk.
Bird: I think they invite everybody to come.
Nary: They do. As many as they can. They have dessert and everything else. I
think –
De Weerd: No, that’s a different group.
Nary: No, --
Bird: That’s the Historical Society.
De Weerd: Yes, that’s the Historical Society. They have great desserts.
Bird: We like coming to that. Second Thursday of every month.
Bird: Go ahead now, Tammy, make your nominations.
Corrie: Mr. Berg.
Berg: Just to let the Council know. When they first set up, they meeting the
second Tuesday of the month, which was a time that the P & Z was meeting at
the same time. That’s how far back this is. I haven’t gotten notice of when they
are meeting or copies of their minutes or anything else since – quite awhile – but
we can make sure they comply and get all that information. Also, so just so you
know, Walter is from Johnson’s Architects, an architect firm that has been doing
quite a few things in Meridian.
De Weerd: His name is Walter—
Corrie: His name is Walter Lindgren. He’s an architect with Johnson
Architectural Firm.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
De Weerd: I would make a motion to approve the appointments of Tony Hickey,
James Moran and Walter Lindgren to the Historical Preservation Commission to
fill the terms of the seats they will be assigned and wish them good luck.
Bird: Second.
Police Department – Chief Worley
B.
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1.Memorandum of Understanding
Corrie: All right. Motion been made and second. Any further discussion? Okay.
All in favor of the motion, say aye. All approved. Is Tony here? I didn’t think so.
Okay. All right. Very good. The next one is – thank you Council. Next one is
Chief of Meridian PD. I believe he has a —
Worley: Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council. Late this afternoon, the Idaho State
Police dropped off a request for an agreement. I passed out a copy of that. This
is Bill’s Memorandum of Understanding for the National Governor’s Association
to provide mutual aid assistance to the Idaho State Police, Boise and Nampa
during the period of time of the Governor’s conference. This agreement differs
from what you just passed in 3-B in that it's not an action/initiate type agreement.
It's a response agreement to a request for assistance from the unified command
post. This is the kind of thing that we typically do, in a course of business,
providing these mutual aid agreements probably 2-3 times a week on an incident
by incident basis. I did want to bring it to Council’s attention since they’ve
requested a little more formal sign-off. They are requesting that I complete that
this week. (inaudible) for any questions.
Corrie: I guess our fire department is not on this one, right?
Worley: Mr. Mayor, they aren’t listed on there. I believe that they are going to be
included but they aren’t listed on the agreement, the copy that was left to me
today.
Corrie: I just noticed (inaudible) they might be.
Worley: Okay.
Corrie: Okay. Any question from Council?
Bird: I have none.
Corrie: Okay. I’ll entertain a motion on the request for Memorandum of
Understanding with the National Governor’s Association annual business
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meeting, July 13 through the 16, 2002 as presented by Chief Worley.
Bird: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move that we approve the Memorandum of Understanding for the
National Governor’s Association annual business meeting from Meridian Police
Department and for the Chief to sign and the Mayor to sign and Clerk to attest.
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April 23, 2002
Page 38 of 83
Nary: Second.
Corrie: Okay. Motion been made and second. Any further discussion?
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
De Weerd: I guess if the fire department is added on there, to authorize his
signature as well.
Bird: If they’re not on here, you can’t pass on it. It would be tough passing on
that. I doubt if they have this in there. The only reason they’ve got Nampa over
there is because—
De Weerd: Chief Worley mentioned that they were going to.
Bird: Oh, are they going to put the fire department on there?
Worley: Mr. Mayor, Council, Mr. Bird. I don’t know for sure whether they are or
not but I would recommend that the authorization be included. This is not the
final draft. The one they’re bringing for signature will be somewhat formatted
differently.
Bird: No problem. I have no problem, then.
Nary: I would concur but I did have a question, Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Yes, Mr. Nary.
Nary: Chief, there’s not a whole lot of structure here as to exactly what they’re
asking for or what we’re supposed to provide. It just says unified command
center. Is that all going to be identified in something, in some other document or
is it just the State’s running this particular security detail. Just if they call for
assistance, they're going to go through you or Captain Musser to determine how
many options we need and what the cost may be or- did they give you any real
idea on that?
Worley: Mr. Mayor, Councilman Nary. No, there isn’t. We don’t know at this
point. As I say, this is a responsive type thing. If they determine, for instance,
they need additional help at the Idaho Center for that venue, at this point, we
don’t have any venues within the City of Meridian that we’re aware of. So it
would just be on an as-needed basis. At that time, we would discuss with the
unified command center how many people we could afford to send based on our
own call load and negotiate it from that point. As I said, this is the kind of thing
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April 23, 2002
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on a regular basis the sheriff’s office might ask us to go out into the county to
back somebody up or that sort of thing. We do it on a regular basis but I didn’t
want to bring this before Council since it's a more formalized iteration of this than
we normally do.
C. Finance Department – Stacy Kilchenmann:
1. Finance Report:
Corrie: Thank you. Okay. Any further discussion? Then the motion is to include
the also the Meridian Fire Department so it's placed there. Okay. Any further
discussion? All those in favor of the motion say aye. Opposed, no. All ayes,
motion carried. Next is the Finance Department’s, Stacy Kilchenmann, finance
report.
Kilchenmann: Mayor and Council. We’re through 6 months of FY2002, so it's
time for our quarterly review. There's not anything particularly noteworthy or
anything that we should be alarmed about so I’m just going to quickly run through
some of the statements. I do have to say tomorrow we will be welcoming back
20% of our staff when Kathleen comes back from maternity leave and we are
very relieved about that because we are starting to run behind. So the first thing,
briefly, on the investments status, if you look at interest rate history, you can see
that interest rates are starting to level out so that is a good sign. The pool is
dipping and it's probably primarily due a loan program they have where they loan
to small businesses at the prime rate and they have made some adjustments in
that program. So they’re rates should start to level out along with everyone else.
Although, that recovery, as you’re probably aware of in the economy, will take
some time. The main impact for us is the enterprise fund because of their big
cash investment balances. They are taking more of a hit than the general fund
with the low interest rates. The general fund is actually doing better than we had
anticipated, I think, because we’re keeping more cash invested than we have in
the past. The next, if you look at the Waste Water Treatment Plant, if you move
into the enterprise statements, basically their revenue has increased about 5%
over the past year. Which is probably due to growth in the (inaudible) accounts.
Remember, we talked last month, we’re splitting the statement so we show the
operation and maintenance part of the existing plant separately from the plant
construction. In the treatment plant, operation and maintenance we have done
some allocations to try to mirror (inaudible) ourselves and Brad are working
together to try to mirror what happens in actuality as much as possible so that
when he calculates his rates we are in concert with that with the financial
statements. So we’re splitting the interest income 25% to operations and
maintenance. Brad felt that that was about fair because they were generating
enough of an excess over their operation, that they probably about 25% of the
cash balance was due to that side. And 75% of the interest income goes to the
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construction side. That’s where the biggest bulk of the investment balance is.
The personnel cost from MUBS and Public Works, we have split half and half
right now between waste water and water. Brad had mirrored that when he was
calculating in his new rates. Operating expense for the treatment plant, if you
take, and I’m going to start showing this because it might be misleading. We
have to remember that a half a million of their operating budget is due to
depreciation. But we only actually do depreciation once a year so that makes
them look like they’re trending, like they’re well trending under their budget. If we
remove depreciation, they are still about 21% under their budget. About 13%
over last year. So there’s no problems there. On their construction side, the
bottom part of the statement, you’ll see that we’ve collected some revenue for
(inaudible) fees that were not budgeted. The only thing to note about is that we
were collecting that money but we don’t have an agreement. So when we do
that, that’s always a little bit iffy. But the late (inaudible) will notice there’s no
budget number. We haven’t traditionally budgeted for that. Right now we’re still
kind of in the situation where we collect, and by the time the actual agreement is
settled and done, we sometimes have to refund money. When we do the audit at
the end of the year, we try to look at that closely and reflect that in the bad debt
expense because we might have to give that back. Those are two things that
probably, in the future, we will work with Public Works and start trying to budget
for those because they’ll impact the amount of money we’ll have available for
construction. If we look at the water, their sales are about 15% over last year.
It's kind of hard to look at them directly compared to their budget because, of
course, their high volume time hasn’t occurred yet. Again, like I said, the interest
income has the same 25% split to operations, 75% to construction, the waste
water does. When we look at their operating cost to their budget, we want to
remove depreciation. They’re 45% under their budget if we remove depreciation.
So there’s a couple of big categories in there. Their equipment and supplies for
wells and their consulting line items, those two line items, they’ve hardly spent
any of that. Then water construction, not a lot spent there either. If we move on
to the general fund, we are somewhat overspent in the Clerk’s budget because
we bought a lap top that we didn’t budget for. Fire, their over-time, they’re still
well over budget. Their regular salary-if you take their whole salary expenses-
the whole (inaudible), they’re still okay. A couple of things, I think, that are
helping them is their actual expense for volunteer wages are quite a bit under
what was budgeted. Their Blue Cross deductible, they’ve hardly spent any the
amount that was budgeted for that. The other area, Parks, Admin is a bit short.
Their copier, office contract labor, contract labor. They’re in an unfortunate
situation that they can’t control because of some of the medical disabilities that
they’ve had. Office expense, they may have spent- overloaded on office supplies
at the beginning of the year. That’s basically it for the financial statement review.
Are there any questions just on the financial statements? The project I’m
working at right now is a revenue manual which is something they haven’t done
in the past. I’ve almost completed the general fund. I’ll need some more figures
that I’ll from the State and Ada County before it’s finalized. When I have a draft, I
will e-mail that to you so you can all start getting a feel for the amount of money
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April 23, 2002
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that will be available, or potentially available, for enhancement so that when you
review your various departments, requests and so forth, it kind of gives you an
idea, overall picture, of what we’re looking at.
D. Public Works Department – Gary Smith:
1. Reimbursement Agreement for Off-Site Water Line Construction
– O’Niell Enterprises / Woodbridge Community, LLC:
Corrie: Thank you, Stacy. Next is Public Works Department, Gary Smith.
Smith: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Council. First item is a reimbursement request for
off-site water line construction to O’Neill Enterprises, developers of the
Woodbridge subdivision. I think you have in your package an outline of the
breakdown of this request for reimbursement. This was an extension of a water
line from Woodbridge’s east boundary line to Magic View and then north to
connect to our existing water main. The total request for that reimbursement is
$41,640. 06. Do you want to review any of the details of that?
Bird: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Gary, the only thing I’ve got is, you’ve looked it over, is their price in line
with what we normally would pay?
Smith: I didn’t look at it in that regard, Councilman Bird. They provided bid
estimates to us for three contractors that we requested and the low bidder,
Brown Construction, is the one that was used for the reimbursement request.
But I did not compare it to what we normally pay.
Bird: They’ve got it out by the linear foot and everything like that—
Smith: Yes, sir, correct.
Bird: The unit prices look within line?
Smith: Well, I personally did not compare those with what we normally get. I
don’t know whether Brad did or not. I would assume that he did. We did get, like
I said, the three estimates from the developer.
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Bird: I’m sure that if they were way out of line, that one of you two would have
threw a red flag up.
Smith: I do recall Brad saying that he had estimated that the cost for this water
line extension was going to be sizably more than what they submitted to us.
Bird: When we talked back in December, I took it that it was much more than
what they submitted here, was what you and Brad had stated the estimate.
Smith: I think he said his estimate was somewhere around $60,000.
Bird: Yes, that’s what I recall.
Smith: I guess our recommendation would be to approve this reimbursement for
construction project administration with Woodbridge Community L.L.C. for the
Woodbridge subdivision number 2 off-site water line project in a lump sum of
$41,640.06. Authorize the Mayor to sign, City Clerk to attest.
De Weerd: So moved.
(inaudible)
Corrie: Mrs. McCandless.
McCandless: I move we approve the reimbursement agreement for construction
project administration with Woodbridge Community L.L.C. for the Woodbridge
subdivision number 2 off-site water line project in a lump sum amount of
$41,640.06. Authorize the Mayor to sign, City Clerk to attest.
Bird: Second.
Corrie: Motion been made and second. Is there any further discussion? None.
All in favor of the motion, say aye. Opposed no. Motion is carried for
$41,640.06.
2. Award of Construction Contract for Well No. 23 Pumping Facilities:
Smith: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Council. The second item I have is
award of construction contract for the construction of well number 23 pumping
facilities. We had four bidders on this project. The bid tab sheet is attached to
the back of your package. Guho Construction was the low bidder. Their bid
price $224,039.20. Second low was J. C. Constructors at $230,800.00.
(inaudible) who has built a couple of our pump houses was the third bidder at
$232,272.00. (inaudible) Construction has just completed the laboratory building
at the Waste Water Treatment Plant. They did an excellent job. I’m very pleased
with their quality of work, with the administration of their contract through Guho
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April 23, 2002
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Construction and their superintendent and their owner. I’m very pleased with
their performance. This well house is a bit more expensive than what we’ve
experienced in the past. However, the reason for that is we’ve gone to a 200
horse power motor for the pump. Subsequently, it's going to have emergency
back-up power, which is also increased in size because of the horse power of the
motor on the pump. I can’t tell you what the difference exactly is between that
but it seems like the generator, alone, but –maybe that’s on the bid abstract-I
think it was $78,000. Yes, bid item number 11 was a generator, $76,000.00. On
past generator projects we’ve, even though the horse power was 130 or 140 I
think on the other pump houses, the generator cost was somewhere around
$37,000 to $38,000. So it just about doubled the generator price for that
increased horse power. We wanted to do that because the water is available.
The water right is for 2,000 gallons per minute and that’s kind of a strategic area
for water flow because of commercial development and the fire flow
requirements. Do you have any questions concerning the bid?
Bird: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I just want to make one note here. The bid is $224,039 and down here in
recommended Council acts says $223,000. But it's $224 am I not right, Gary?
Smith: Yes, sir, Councilman Bird. That’s correct. I’m sorry, that is a typo.
Bird: I just wanted to clarify it.
Smith: Thank you.
Corrie: Any other discussion.
Bird: I’ve got one other question.
Corrie: All right.
Bird: Gary?
Smith: Yes, sir.
Bird: Were the bids all filled out properly and all this because this is a legal angle
that is going to show up that people are going to be talking about. All the forms
were filled out?
Smith: Oh, yes, sir. Correct.
Bird: The bonds notarized?
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Smith: They’re all notarized—
Bird: The corporate seal was on and everything?
Smith: Yes, sir. Correct. I personally checked those.
Bird: Okay. Thank you, Gary.
Corrie: I’ll entertain a motion then for request for—
Smith: Mr. Mayor, I would recommend a Council action from Public Works
Department. We recommend City Council award the contract for construction of
well number 23 pumping facility to Guho Company for the amount of $224,039.
20 for the Mayor to sign, City Clerk to attest.
Corrie: Okay. Do I hear a motion?
Bird: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I would move that we award the contract for well 23 pumping facilities to
Guho Company in the amount of $224,039.20 and authorize the Mayor to sign,
City Clerk to attest.
De Weerd: Second.
Corrie: Okay. Motion been made and second. Is there any further discussion?
All those in favor of the motion say aye. All ayes, motion carried.
3. Award of Contract for Elevated (Water) Tank Repainting Project:
Smith: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council. The third item I have concerns
the award of the contract for the elevated water tank. We bid that project. The
bids came in way over budget, so we would like to take some more time, analyze
th
what our options are, and report back to you at the May 6 meeting. With your
permission.
McCandless: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
McCandless: I move that we-(inaudible)—
Corrie: Did I say Mrs. De Weerd?
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McCandless: I don’t know who you said-
Corrie: Mrs. McCandless.
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McCandless: That we hold the tank repainting project until May 6.
Bird: I second that.
Corrie: Motion been made and second to hold the awarding of the contract for
th
the water tank repainting project until May 6.
Nary: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: Did Councilwoman De Weerd want to deal with the color of the tank or
anything?
(inaudible)
Bird: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
th
Smith: Mr. Mayor, members of the Council. The 6 is a Monday.
th
Bird: It’s the 7.
th
Corrie: Okay, May 7.
Bird: Second agrees.
Smith: Thank you.
Corrie: All those in favor of the motion say aye. Opposed no. Motion carried.
Smith: Thank you, Mayor, Council. The last item I have is a request from the
Epilepsy Foundation of Idaho for the City of Meridian to supply water for their
annual mud volleyball tournament that they hold as a fundraising event. I’ve
been told that the—last year the organization approached us and we were under
a drought condition last year and I think refused the request at that time. They’ve
come back this year, again, with their annual tournament request for water.
They’re using, as I understand, at around a half million gallons of water in this
process for the tournament. Based on our rate structure, I just calculated it off
the rate chart. It’s about $616.00 worth of water. It's my understanding that this
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April 23, 2002
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event is scheduled to be held in June sometime. The site they have chosen is
somewhere west of the Blue Cross building, in that—oh, I can’t think of the name
of the commercial subdivision but—and I’m not positive that that’s the exact
location. The representative, Pat Harding, has been in contact with Rick Clinton
at our Water Department several times and they’ve gone back and forth. Rick
asked me today at our supervisor’s meeting about it and realizing that Mr.
Harding needed an answer as soon as possible because of their planning
process. My response to Rick was that we would need to charge for the water,
understanding, of course, this is their fundraising event that that would be an
expense that they’d incur out of their funds that they do raise. So I guess that—I
don’t know if Mr. Harding here tonight—and that’s the information that we passed
along to Mr. Harding through Rick Clinton, our Water Superintendent.
Corrie: Pat, if you could kind of fill us in the holes here, I think it might be of
benefit to the Council to hear what we’re doing here, for sure, and what you’re
requesting.
Harding: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Council Members. First of all, the event is the
th
15 annual mud volleyball tournament for the Epilepsy Foundation of Idaho. This
is an annual event that we hold. Last year it was held across the street from the
Idaho Center. It was through the City of Nampa. We did request water from the
City of Meridian and it was at least two years ago, if not three. The reason we
were given for not accessing water through Meridian was the well structure was
not such that they could pump out the water that we needed. In terms of the
volume of water, my correspondence with Mr. Clinton was that we would need
somewhere between 800 and a million gallons of water. The event raises about
$45,000 to $60,000 for the Epilepsy Foundation. We are a private non-profit.
We are a United Way organization. I’m sure if any of you have picked up a
newspaper, you’ve seen the cutbacks in United Way. We had a 12% holdback,
which was $12,000. We had another 3% holdback from the State on our State
Contract. So it's a very difficult budget year. In the 14 years that we’ve held the
tournament, United Water has donated that water 12 of 13 times. They charged
a nominal fee on one of those and on last year’s tournament, Nampa Water
donated all of water. Our request is very basic that the City of Meridian provide
the water for the tournament. All of the dollars that are raised in this tournament,
the $45,000 to $60,000 goes back into Epilepsy Services in the Treasure Valley.
It directly impacts your children. It directly impacts all of the folks in your city.
The tournament going to be held directly behind the Blue Cross building in the
Crossroads Subdivision. It's an undeveloped business area. We’ll be clearing a
good portion of that of all the weeds so that we can actually have parking on the
fields in some of the areas and then also have the mud for the field. It's a five
acre section with 36 courts, 2,000 players and 1,000 spectators. So it's a very
large event.
Corrie: Gary, what is the estimate on the amount of water (inaudible)
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April 23, 2002
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Smith: At a million gallons, it would be $1,230.00.
Corrie: Questions from Council?
Bird: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: To mud the fields up, could you pump out of ditch with a tanker and then
just use the City Water to wash the participants down?
Smith: We have looked at the possibility of providing irrigation water. Blue Cross
has that nice big pond and we approached them the first time and they turned us
down. At the Water Department’s request, we approached them again and we
were turned down for several reasons. One would be the volume of water that
would be needed. It would take a lot longer to get it out of there and we’d be
blocking off their entire parking lot to run the hoses. We’ve explored the
possibility of using water trucks. Given the volume of water, it's not been
feasible. We’ve looked at that, at least two other times in the past.
Bird: Have you checked with a Fire Department that’s got one of those big
tankers that could go down to the Boise River, fill the thing up and come up there
and hose it down—a couple of tankers?
Harding: Getting the Fire Department to help out has been difficult this year.
We’ve had one volunteer from the Boise Fire Department, who’s done our water
over the past several years. This year the Fire Fighters Union is looking to do
our watering for us. But we have not been able to access that kind of equipment
and that kind of manpower in order to do that. The water needs are not just the
water on the field itself. We also have an entire shower system out there for
folks.
Bird: I understand that and that’s what I said. The well water for that but—how
much water does it take to mud down the fields?
Harding: Last year, the tournament used 800,000 gallons of water including the
shower system. It varies, depending on the soil. Last year, we had some—
*** End of Side Three ***
Harding: --very, very good. This year, we have yet to clear the weeds to see
exactly what it's going to take. I don’t believe we’ve ever gone over a million
gallons.
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April 23, 2002
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Bird: But, you know, if you could pull out of the Boise River through a tanker
system and cut yourself 500,000 gallons, it's a saving due to regardless of
whether you donate or have to pay for it.
Harding: The prices, you’ll forgive me, but these are from a couple of years ago,
the prices that we got from pulling pumped water in, were more expensive than if
we pay for the water directly. We also have the additional issues of the volunteer
labor. Right now, this particular tournament, is a very volunteer extensive
tournament. We’ve got a commitment from the Fire Fighters Union for six
volunteers to come out and pump and they’ll be doing this the day before the
event and the day of. Having to run back and forth for trucks, I personally don’t
think it's viable. We’ve looked at—
Bird: So what you’re saying is, you just want to hook up to the hydrant and pump
out of the well.
Harding: For the past 14 years, we’ve hooked up to a hydrant and pumped out
of a well. I would reiterate, the dollars that are raised go back in the services for
your community.
Bird: I think you’ve got a great program. Nobody will argue that point at all. I
think it's a great program.
Nary: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: I don’t know—it may not be feasible to pump it out of either an irrigation or
out of the river because I don’t know if you can pump 500,000 gallons out of the
river without a permit.
Bird: Yes, you’re probably right there.
Nary: I don’t know if we could do that. My only concern, I think, is this is the
user’s money that we’re using to donate. I guess my concern would be, we don’t
have a standard in which to do that with. We’ve been wrestling for a while now
on even a project share type of program for people who can’t afford the water
services, as it is. We’ve been struggling with that process right now. I guess my
concern would be, in donating this water to this, although I agree with
Councilman Bird, I think it's an admirable program and provides a vital need to
the community, but for us to make that decision really opens the door without us
having any standards to every other person that would like City services for free.
For a donated, whether it's sewer, whether it's water or whether it's something
else. Whether it's some other type of service at no charge. I guess my concern
is, if we don’t really have a standard to this with, this really isn’t our money to be
doing it with. So I don’t know that we can do this for you.
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Harding: My experience in the past has been that, quite frankly, this is the first
time I’ve had to go before a City Council on this. It's always been decided at the
director’s level in the past, with my experience in doing this. I suppose the
difference that I see between someone coming up and wanting to use the
services for free, is if I’m a resident and I want my sewer services for free and I
can say, well, that organization got it. My comment would be that we’re putting
this money back into the community. These are services that(inaudible) out in
your schools, teaching your teachers and your doctors and helping your children
and your families. So, I guess, all of these go right back into your community as
opposed to just using it and not having to pay.
Nary: My concern isn’t that somebody in their house is going to necessarily want
free sewer or water. My concern is other non-profit organizations come and ask
for the same thing. We don’t have a standard in which to apply that to. The City
provides a number of services that would also be beneficial if they didn’t have to
pay the cost of that to operate some type of fundraising event. So again, that’s
just my concern. And so we don’t really have a way to prevent or to deal with
other people asking for the same service. And all of a sudden, one event tends
to be ten. Then we don’t have another method in which to deal with these
requests.
Harding: My only response could be that, to the best of my knowledge the City of
Nampa or United Water through Boise, have not had any issues associated with
donating the water to the Foundation for once a year use. It hasn’t caused an
overwhelming request for services for free that may or may not deserve it.
Bird: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: In response to that, United Water is a private company for profit. So what
they do is—they don’t answer to taxpayers.
Harding: I understand that.
Bird: We answer to taxpayers. I don’t know about Nampa. I know they do too.
Their water is—I don’t know—I’m like Mr. Nary. Not having a policy in place, I
don’t know what we’d do, I mean, what you are putting on is very, very, very,
good cause and if there’s any way possible that we could help, I’m for it. Without
having something in place that we, it's like he said, pretty soon we donate say
$1,200.00 worth of water here, what’s to say some other groups says, ‘hey, we
want to have a mud volleyball tournament’, which yours isn’t the only one that
they have in the valley, will you donate it to us’? Well, pretty soon, we’re having
a whole bunch of donations down here and our taxpayers are saying you can’t
even help us with a share, care to share. That’s my only concern.
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
Page 50 of 83
Nary: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Nary:
Nary: Mr. Smith, hasn’t there been some discussion internally regarding
monitoring the water usage out of the hydrants and maybe essentially at some
point looking at charging for some of those things? Not just for a non-profit but
for other entities that use our water for a variety of reasons.
Smith: Yes, sir. We have hydrant meters that we lease out to construction
companies, to other people that need to use water, other than through a standard
permanent type meter. These are temporary uses. We’ve been doing that to try
and get a handle on all of our water use and account for our water use so that we
utilize that in determining the rate structure for the amount of water we do pump.
We are selling water through the hydrants for other uses. Temporary type uses.
Primarily, construction.
Nary: Mr. Mayor this is just a suggestion. The government has a tendency to
move fairly slow. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed that. I do think that what
you’re proposing is a very admirable thing. As I’ve said, my concern is that we
don’t have a standard. How much of an impact on this event would it be for us to
see if we could find a standard that we’re comfortable with. And we may not. If
we had the opportunity and time, since this just came up to us today, to find a
standard that we can deal with this issue because we have a variety of issues
around this thing. You still would have the opportunity to come back and ask us
to relieve the cost of the water after the event is over. So again, we’re not
promising we’re going to do it, and you’re no worse off than if we just said no.
But, at least, that we would consider maybe creating some standards that we’d
be comfortable with in dealing with this type of thing. And you’d be able to come
after the event and ask for relief from the bill.
Harding: Councilman Nary, from my perspective, we have been on hold with
regards to this, and the reality is that if we don’t have water—we were even told
that there was a possibility that we would not even have water even if we were to
pay for it. Without water, we can’t hold a volleyball tournament. (inaudible) It can
be pretty painful in dry but up until, even today, we have not had a guarantee that
we could have water, regardless of whether it's paid or donated. All of our
publishing, all of our PR material is on hold until we can guarantee that when we
tell folks we’re going to have this field and we put the maps out, and we send out
3,000 brochures and have the PSA’s done and have the radio announcements
done that we will, in fact, have a field that has 800,000 to a million gallons of
water on it so we can have a quality event. My biggest concern at this point in
time, is that we have a commitment from Meridian that we can access the
hydrants to water the field. I understand we’re talking about $1,200.00, which for
a non-profit is an enormous amount of money but if we note it up front that we
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
Page 51 of 83
will still have to do it, we just won’t have the dollars to put back into services for
the communities is what it will come down to. If we have an opportunity to come
back to the Council and request either a total waiver or a partial waiver of
payment, I’m perfectly fine with that. As long as you all can tell me today, put
your materials out, you have a field, you have water and we’ll figure out the
payment after the event, after we’ve had a chance to look at the cost, that’s fine
with me.
Corrie: I have a question, then. It's another light on this. Who said there
wouldn’t be enough water? Do they anticipate we won’t have water? Did
anybody ever guarantee you that you were going to have the water? Did
Nampa, or did Boise? That it's there and they guaranteed even if they had a
drought.
Harding: The way that they explained it with Nampa, they had some concerns
about the well pumping ability and there was some possibility of having to stretch
out the pumping for more than a day. They decided that it wouldn’t have an
impact. Talking to Mr. Clinton with the Department of Water here in Meridian, he
indicated that the water was there. That wasn’t the issue. It was whether or not
the City would be willing to donate it or if we pay for it. There was concerns that
perfectly good drinking water was being poured onto the ground. No, we have
never been promised any water and that’s what’s been holding us up, is the fact
that even though we were told we may have to pay for it, we were still told that
may not be a possibility as well.
Corrie: The possibility is just the fact that it may take two days to pump it. I
mean, nobody gave you a guarantee you’d have the water. From what you’re
saying, we can’t guarantee (inaudible) done in one time. But if there was enough
water in that well, is that right Gary—
Smith: I don’t know what the rate of pumping is required. How many gallons per
minute are you needing?
Harding: They use a four-inch hose for twenty-four hours. We have a fireman
who figures that out. We generally start about 12:00 and we pump through the
night on into the next day and then we have a shower system running all day and
an occasional hose going to wet some areas on the field. It wasn’t an issue of
them guaranteeing that we could pump it all in one day. The issue that was
raised to us was, whether we could have access to the water itself. Not whether
or not we could pump it in one day but whether or not we would be allowed to
hook up to the hydrants because it could be considered a waste of water. That
was the issue that was raised to us. That’s what’s put a hold on all of our PR and
advertising materials.
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
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Corrie: I think Mr. Nary may have a possible solution for you. I don’t think we
have a problem guaranteeing. Gary, if we say that they can use the water, they
may have to pay for it, if we can’t come up with a solution.
Smith: As long as our facility out there will produce that amount of water, and off
the top of my head, I don’t know what that is in gallons per minute. I don’t know.
We calculate it based on the pressure in that area—
Harding: I can get the information for you through the guy who has done our
water. He’s a fireman in Boise and he’s on military duty right now but when I can
reach him, I can get you that information of much he puts out in the time frame
that he allows for watering.
Smith: Our number one requirement in the City of Meridian, is to provide drinking
water to the residents of the City. That’s our number one charge. If we get to a
point where we don’t have enough water for irrigation, we don’t have enough
water for irrigation. That’s a secondary requirement. That means lawns don’t get
watered but our charge is to provide drinking water and, I guess, that’s why I
hesitated on this request. I did not feel comfortable in making a decision at my
level. It just goes back to all the meetings that I attend concerning drinking
water, conservation of water, et cetera, et cetera. It leads me to this decision of
no decision, I guess. Or the decision that I did make, that if you want the water
you need to pay for it. Even though, in my own mind, it’s a concern that it is
drinking water. Even though we are fortunate in this area, that it is ground water
that is not requiring a high degree of expense and treatment. If it was surface
water and we had to run it through a surface water treatment plant, then that cost
goes up significantly. So we are fortunate in that regard. I’m still preaching
conservation of water because it is drinking water. I hope you understand that,
Pat.
Harding: Actually, we appreciate it. In drought years, we actually put out water
conservation cards in our promos. We recognize that in drought years that it's an
issue. We’re very cognizant of that. It's an issue we look at every single year
when we look at the longevity of this tournament.
Corrie: Any other discussion?
Bird: I have none. I entertain, the same as Councilman Nary, that if they want to
do that, if we’ve got the water available, then they can come back in, if we can
find some kind of a program that would help pay for it or maybe we can find
some civic group that would like to help pay for it or something like that could do
it, I have no problem with that. But our primary concern is for our citizens to have
water.
Corrie: When we have a shower, it's got to be drinking water. You can’t pump it
out of the ditch (inaudible).
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
Page 53 of 83
Smith: That’s true, Mr. Mayor. That’s true. That’s a good point. I guess I would
like to request that if your decision is to move forward with this in the affirmative,
that way we, at least have a condition that we do have the volume necessary for
the facility to provide that. I’ll be talking with Mr. Harding or under our own
calculations to determine that we have the gallons per minute that you need. Do
you have a separate need at the showers in terms of gallons per minute to serve
all of the showers if they’re all running at the same time?
Harding: We only have about 15 showers. We have very long lines and about
15 showers. In terms of the usage, we have the ability, it can be difficult with
volunteers but we had worked with Nampa last year and initially we were going to
be spreading out the watering over a two to three day period which is incredibly
difficult, given that we’re using fire hoses and those things. But they came back
the last minute and said you don’t need to worry about it but if we need to go to
something like that, we just need to be pumping.
Smith: That’s fine.
Corrie: I think we probably need a motion to make sure that he’s got the right
criteria. Also in that motion, that if there happens to be a major fire or something
out there, you’re—
Harding: Second on the list, yes, I understand that.
Nary: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: I guess I would move that we authorize the Public Works Director to
negotiate with the Epilepsy League to provide water service for this event in June
for their mud volleyball fundraising, with the (inaudible) that there is available
water for the location site that the City can provide for cost. Certainly, there
would be other things, such as a major fire, that may be an impediment to
providing the water on that day. That Mr. Smith can work out those particular
details with the Epilepsy League and that the City will also consider, after the
event, if the Epilepsy League wishes to come back and ask for relief from the
cost, that we will consider that. In the interim, I guess it's not part of the motion,
in the interim I guess our commitment to you was that we will work on that issue
internally as to see whether or not there is a standard or protocol that we would
be comfortable with in providing that. While we’re not making any promises that
we’re going to grant that relief at all. But that we simply would consider that at a
later point in time.
th
Harding: If I may, the event is in July. It's July 27 and it's the Epilepsy
Foundation. It's the legal name.
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
Page 54 of 83
Corrie: Was the date July, what?
th
Harding: July 27.
Bird: I second that motion, if that was a motion.
Nary: Yes.
Corrie: Okay. I hope you all remember what it was because I can't repeat that.
Nary: I’ll bet we’ve got it on tape.
De Weerd: He always has such long ones.
Corrie: Any further discussion?
De Weerd: Are you participating, Mayor?
th
Corrie: Am I participating? I’m going to be gone the 27 of July.
Bird: Hey, they’re fun. Everybody should play in one of them. I’ve played in—
Corrie: You don’t drown—you drown in mud but—Okay. Any further discussion?
All those in favor of the motion say aye. Opposed, no. Motion is approved with
the condition, make sure you’ve got that in the written form so that you know
exactly. Then, we’ll go from that—
Harding: Thank you, Council Members.
Nary: Keep in touch, okay.
Bird: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move that we take a ten-minute recess.
Corrie: You’ve got it. Recess until 9:30. (inaudible)
(Council takes recess)
Item 10. Continued Public Hearing from April 2, 2002:
Proposed
Comprehensive Parks and Recreation System and Action Plan:
Continued Public Hearing to May 7, 2002
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
Page 55 of 83
Corrie: Okay. I reopen the meeting and remind that this is a continued public
hearing on the proposed Comprehensive Parks and Recreation System and
Action Plan. At this time, I will continue the public hearing and make note that
the staff comments first and that we do have a three-minute limit to conversation
and air. Nobody signed up so I presume that staff, you have three minutes.
Nobody wants to talk so we’ll get this over with very quickly.
Kuntz: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Council. We do have three Parks Commissioners
here tonight who would like to use all three minutes of their time if they could
when I’m finished with mine.
Corrie: I will approve that, yes.
Kuntz: Thank you. Mayor, Council you have before you tonight a page and a
quarter memo regarding changes to the Parks Comprehensive Action Plan. I
don’t want to go through each one of those with you tonight to waste your time
because a lot of them are just clean-up and verbiage and name changes. Some
of these changes were a result of our meetings with the Builder’s Council, BCA,
and the Realtor’s Association. We had two meetings with them. We focused on
impact fees and neighborhood versus community parks were the two big issues,
our topics of discussion with those two groups. I would also like to add a
comment, at this time, that the minutes that were submitted by the Planning and
nd
Zoning Staff at the April 2 meeting, our staff or the Parks Commission has
never received those.
Corrie: You never received a copy of it?
Kuntz: Nothing. No e-mail, no copies, nothing. So I will not be addressing those
issues tonight.
Corrie: We approved them at the last meeting so you should have gotten a copy.
We all had them. So I’ll – okay – we’ll talk to the City Clerk about that. Okay?
Kuntz: With that, I’d like to start in on the first chapter one, page one through
four, and just explain that the way that it's written right now makes it sound like
this park system, this plan, will take care of the community at build-out, and it will
not. If we are shooting for a four acre per thousand level of service, this plan is
really designed to accommodate our population in the year 2020 or there about.
So I wanted to clean that up. The next one is, the golf course was never
identified, so we want to add that in a couple of places starting with Table 1.5
under Existing Park Land with a note that the golf course is not calculated into
the level of service for park land in regards to impact fees. The next item, which
I’m adding up above where it says Chapter 2, Page 2-12. I found another
change earlier this afternoon. That’s Chapter 2, Page 2-8, Table 2.3. We want
to change N-22, which is Neighborhood Park Number 22 to Kiwanis Park. We
want to add N-which is Neighborhood Park Number 25, Autumn Faire Park,
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
Page 56 of 83
which we own. It would be developed only and then that would change the totals
down below at the bottom of Table 2.3. Then on page 2.9, we would make the
same changes there, where we would add Autumn Faire and change the name
of N-22 to Kiwanis Park. With that, the only other item I would like to call your
attention on that front page, is again not noted there. It's 2-17 is the page. We
would just change the name to Settler’s Park just to clean up item. On the
second quarter sheet, the only item I want to call your attention to there, is
Chapter 4, starting on Page 4-1. We would like to rewrite this entire staffing
section. Primarily because, at the end of summer of this year, we will have
actually 82 acres and we would like to reflect that now, with your approval, of
course. Then above Chapter 5, Page 5-4, we want to add in there Item #11. We
want to add that the verbiage—add the school district as a partner with the public
agencies. Because, actually, one of our parks is a partnership at the Meridian
Middle School. It's identified in the Plan already. With that, I would stand for
questions. I know the Commissioners may want to add something, at some
point. Thank you, Mayor.
Corrie: Questions of Tom?
Bird: I have none.
Nary: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: So Tom, what we have in our packet, which is P & Z Department Staff
Comments, you haven’t received those so you don’t have any comment on any
of those.
Kuntz: No, sir. This is the first time I’ve seen them.
Nary: My recollection, and I guess I don’t have those minutes here, when we
had this sent over a couple of weeks ago, wasn’t the reason we were sending it
over because you had the comments from the Planning and Zoning staff and you
hadn’t had the opportunity to address them yet?
Kuntz: No, sir. Actually, originally, I asked this to be sent over today’s date, the
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23, and staff member in the Clerk’s office neglected to move it. The reason we
delayed it is because we want an opportunity to meet with the BCA and the
Realtor’s Association to address their two issues.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
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April 23, 2002
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De Weerd: I don’t think it's the staff failed to move it. We moved it to a date
certain. It had to be on that agenda to consider. I believe it was on that agenda
when we continued it to this date that we mentioned. I don’t know if you were
here or not but it was on our agenda. We said this needs to be tabled again, per
Tom’s request, for the reason to meet with BCA and the Association of Realtors
and for you to have time to comment on the recommendations from the Planning
and Zoning staff.
Nary: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: We aren’t able to get this on our laptop but I did read these minutes and
that’s what is reflected. I believe I asked the question, Mr. Kuntz wasn’t in the
room and, I think, you answered the question as to why we had to set this over.
That was one of the reasons, was to be able to get these comments. Then, I
nd
believe, you came back in the room. If we look at the minutes for April 2, I think
that what was discussed at the time. So I don’t know whether you were
supposed to get them or they supposed to get them to you but that was why we
set it over to today.
Kuntz: Councilman Nary, your recollection is correct. But that was not at the
nd
April 2 meeting. It was done two weeks prior to that at the workshop at the
Council’s request, why are we delaying this, and that’s when we had the
rd
discussion. I actually discussed it with the Mayor in March to move it to the 23
of this month. He approved that and then it ended up being on the agenda on
nd
April 2 by mistake. I know this for a fact because I received a call in Phoenix,
nd
Arizona as to the fact that it got on the April 2 agenda and the Mayor and I had
discussed several weeks earlier and had actually notified the council it would not
ndrd
be on the April 2 , it would be the 23 and for the reasons why.
Nary: Part of the discussion, Mr. Kuntz, was you would have opportunity and
time to comment on all of these staff comments for Planning and Zoning.
Whether they got them to you or you didn’t get them from them, really doesn’t
matter to me. There’s a number of comments here that probably need to be
addressed before we can finally approve this Plan. I don’t care who got them to
you or didn’t, I don’t know how we’re supposed to forward today with this many
comments but Stiles isn’t here at the moment. I think there’s some things here
that they’ve raised that, I guess I wanted your opinion on before we finish this.
Bird: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
nd
Bird: To clarify why it was on the 2, and it wasn’t the fault of any employee in
thnd
the City Clerk’s office. I made the motion on March 12 that moved it to April 2
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
Page 58 of 83
so when we moved it in a motion there, the Mayor nor the Council can not
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change it without going through the formality of changing it at the April 2
meeting.
th
De Weerd: These comments from the P & Z staff are date stamped March 28
nd
so they came for the packet at April 2 meeting. I’m sure, like Councilman Nary
suggested, we did make reference to it. I don’t know you were in the room or not
but the delay was because of these comments as well as giving you an
opportunity to meet with the BCA and Association of Realtors. Also on the
th
meeting we addressed (inaudible) on March 12, we did ask that the Pathway
Plan partnerships with the school to look at key schools, in particular the Middle
School, and then there was the meeting with the BCA and Realtors. Your
recommendation, I don’t see the Pathway Plan or the school issue addressed.
Did you have a chance to address those that we asked you to follow up with?
Kuntz: Councilwoman De Weerd. Actually, we had a workshop with the Parks
Commission to address that specific issue. The Commission felt strongly that if
we added the section in under Chapter 5, Page 5-4, Item 11 by adding the school
district as partnerships in that section. They felt that would accommodate the
spirit of, I believe, what you were requesting. We can certainly add more text if
you don’t feel like that’s strong enough wording.
De Weerd: Did we get anywhere with the Pathway Plan?
Kuntz: The Pathway Plan, maybe I just need some clarification. The Pathway
Plan for us to actually adopt a more specific plan than we have contained in this
document, is going to be a timely process. We did get the information from the
Pathway Committee approximately three weeks ago. But to hold up the adoption
of this document after all the months we spent on it, didn’t seem real prudent
because of the time it would take to really put a more specific Pathway Plan
together.
De Weerd: It appears through the comments of the Planning and Zoning staff,
many of the issues here are Pathway issues as well. There were a number of
discrepancies between what our Park’s Master Plan showed and what our
Comprehensive Plan shows. They do need to get ironed just because they are
referenced. At least those two documents, maybe a brand new plan not
introduced. They still need to resemble one another when we adopt one plan or
the other, they do need to mirror each other. There does need to be some work
on the Pathway Plan. These comments will help you on that. I don’t know, since
we just got these comments, I don’t know if the language you’re suggesting really
accomplishes, at least what I had in mind with the partnership with the school,
but maybe it's vague enough that it could.
Kuntz: Councilwoman De Weerd, I wonder if one of the Commissioners would
like to comment on that. Guess not.
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
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(inaudible)
De Weerd: You know the protocol.
Corrie: Is the testimony you are about to give the truth, the whole truth, nothing
but the truth, so help you God?
McCoy: Certainly, it is.
Corrie: Okay, name and address for the record.
McCoy: Bruce McCoy, 2171 South Retriever, Meridian, Idaho.
Corrie: Thank you, Bruce.
McCoy: In regards to the school, we pretty much, I think we addressed that
when we presented the Council that the plan itself. We pretty much side-stepped
that in the sense that we revamped that one set that refer to that. The Plan is to
specifically to address park lands for the City of Meridian and not so much to
expand to create a relationship with the schools where we depend on them to
augment our park land. As far as partnering with them and as much as there’s
spaces available to us, we’re certainly going to take advantage of that. But I
don’t know that it has to be taken care of in the scope of this document as it does
not pertain to the City of Meridian Park System and it never will because we can
not have access to those lands, actually. The school has preference
on(inaudible) So I don’t know that that’s—the section we have in the Plan that
addresses it, I hope it gives us framework enough to allow us to expand on that
as we go (inaudible) opportunities. But I don’t think for consideration of this
Council to approve this Plan, it's imperative that we have that spelled out.
Because it really does pertain to the City of Meridian Park System.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
De Weerd: Bruce, I guess I would go back to discussions at these workshops to
develop this Plan as well as at the Commission with the consultants that worked
on this with us. We had this conversation, as far as utilizing open space that the
schools provide. In particular, it would be the Meridian Middle School. In
particular, at the time, that was one of the key open space areas in the City and
the most widely and heavily used piece of green space in the City and the desire
of the City to improve that area. It was discussed at that time with Mr. (inaudible)
Moore as well as Mr. Drew Goo that that could be brought into the picture used
as City if an agreement and a partnership were entered in to and that the City
could actually benefit because they went in and improved for useable green
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
Page 60 of 83
space with a Memorandum of Understanding or something so that after a certain
time of the day that the City would then have the scheduling such as you
referenced, as sports council would oversee or something like that. Better sports
field management type of thing. That’s kind of the direction I was looking for in
terms of how we want to reference or maybe the Commission has discussed it
and decided that that’s not worth it. In my perspective, if we’re looking to bring
our green space to a certain level of service so that we can implement some
these impact fees or capital improvement plan that the Commission is suggesting
so we can get to that level of service that we all desire. That was the most
feasible and affordable option that we had at the time.
McCoy: Except for the fact that BCA informed us that we cannot base our
calculations on lands that are not owned by the City of Meridian. So we cannot
include those lands in our calculation for impact fees because the City doesn’t
actually have access to those twenty-four hours a day at their leisure. They’re
actually supervised and utilized by the School District and actually by the
Meridian School District Rules. There really should not be anybody accessing
any properties in the school district after dusk. So it does limit our ability to use
those fields and certainly, it doesn’t benefit us to include them in our plans. We
can’t add it to our green space totals. We do want to work with the schools,
inasmuch as, we can help them utilize their fields to augment the programs for
youth fitness. I think, in the scope of this plan, that’s asking quite a bit because it
doesn’t really pertain to the City of Meridian Park System, which is what we’re
really striving to build a framework for. I think the Plan does address the fact that
we do want to partner with the schools and it provides a way for us to pursue
that. That’s kind of a sideline of this particular focus, this particular plan, which is
how do we build a framework for the City of Meridian Park System to get it to
where it needs to be?
De Weerd: Okay, well having not been privy to those conversations, I guess,
even though the consultants did suggest because of that Memorandum of
Understanding or going into some contractual, and I don’t know if BCA is, or if we
have checked with our various attorneys on the legalities of those languages, I
don’t know. In addition to any existing properties, there is still (inaudible) location
of Parks and how that would also play into the neighborhood-size park if it abuts
to an open space of the school district and how that’s going to be defined and, I
believe, that those questions were raised in particular with the neighborhood
centers, (inaudible) location of parks with the school districts and if we bought
seven acres next to their seven acres, what is it considered and those definitions.
McCoy: At this point in time, my experience has been the Meridian School
District wants to remain separate from the Meridian Parks District completely and
totally to the point of my personal experience with Kiwanis Park in discussing the
abutment of lands there with the school district. They don’t even want to have a
pass-through gate from the parking lot to the park, at this point, because they
want to control the student population on their property. Their desire to have the
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blending of lands, that’s going to have to require a little bit more discussion, I
guess. The current situation is, that the Meridian School District wants to keep
Meridian School District lands completely contained and separate from Park
lands. We would like to see them adjacent and possibly develop some sort of
relationship where we can blend the two but, at this point, I think we need to
focus on what's the City of Meridian going to build for a Park System aside from
the School District divides.
De Weerd: In workshops with the School District, they have expressed other
things. I think, probably, we need to get the Commission in these conversations
because we all need to be on the same page and, I’m sorry, I am a taxpayer and
I think that if we can not come together on this, we are not utilizing the taxpayers
money well, with this at all. I’m very adamant about this one. It just baffles me
why two taxpaying entities can’t come together and assure this is all for the kids.
It's all used in the same dollar and that’s mine. I’d like to see that maximized.
This is one thing I would like, at least, see stronger language in this Comp Plan
that it definitely allows these kind of things to be pursued and that the definitions
would support those kind of pursuals.
McCoy: I think it's a good point, Councilwoman De Weerd. I agree in the sense
that as a taxpayer I see all those school open spaces and I say, gee, that should
be accessible to us as citizens and, in fact, it is when the school is not in session
simply because of the safety issue with the children. I do take issue with the fact
that, trying to include a complete plan for us blend the schools into the Park
System and make them accessible in this particular document, it's probably
misguided, in the sense that this document is set up just simply to give us a
structure to build a City Park System. In the process of doing that, if we plan
properly, which our does specify, building lands next to schools and sharing as
much space as possible, as we go forward, we can develop those relationships
and open those spaces up. I think as a document, this stands alone, developing
a Park System for the City of Meridian, which is most important in the
calculations of actually being able to make assessments to them. New
properties. It has to be Meridian City Land. This happens to address city land
that we actually have control over and actually can build on and actually have
programs that we want on it. That’s the scope of the plan. I think we tried to
encompass too many things and we’ll never get it approved. We have to be very
specific.
Nary: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: I don’t know if this is a solution either, but this isn’t just a Park Plan, it's a
Park and Recreation System Plan. What I’m hearing from Councilwoman De
Weerd, we’re talking, I guess-What I envision with the School District, is
essentially the opposite of what we asked non-profit organizations to do for the
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City and partner. We provide the land, they provide the improvements. With the
School District, it's somewhat the opposite. They’re going to provide the land
and the City is going to provide some improvements to again enhance the
recreation system. So, I guess, I’d agree with what you’re saying, Mr. McCoy. I
think for the Park System and the Park Plan, it probably isn’t necessary to try to
calculate those facilities as part of our Park System. It probably does need
stronger tax in regards to the recreation part of the Parks and Recreation
Department that talks about partnering and working with the School District. I
don’t see the language in here to be that strong. I did hear Mr. Bigham say to us
that they’re in 100% support of the idea of Parks and Schools together. I don’t
think they have the same vision that Councilwoman De Weerd has. He did say
that future school sites may be able to take that into account. They can design
the schools to allow for those types of things. All I think I’m hearing, we’d like to
see in this Plan more reference to that, more text to that. Not to use it towards
the impact fee issue but to use it as a guideline to say, here’s the other piece that
we’re looking at, not just our Park property but how are going to provide
recreational opportunities in the City because we can’t purchase all of the land. I
think that’s clearly in here that we don’t have the money to do all of those things
but we may have the money to do some other things in a different way. That’s
where I think maybe the text is a little bit light. Maybe the reason is because
maybe a misunderstanding or miscommunication between what we’re thinking
and the Park Commission is thinking.
Bird: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: This is a Comp Plan for, as Bruce has said, our City owned property. I
encourage partnerships with the schools but, in the same token, for the
recreation deal, we do use the school facilities. Associations use it. Powell gets
permission from the schools, to get the deal. Optimist club, we called David
Mosier. We have to bring in our certificates of insurance and this stuff for us to
use it. I think the text should state that we need it. Our policy should be to
partner with the schools. I don’t think they’re property and stuff should be
included in this Comprehensive Plan outlay. I agree with Mr. Nary on that. I
don’t think, on our Comprehensive Plan, if we want to put a policy in that that
we’re going to work with the schools and do whatever we can but it shouldn’t be
something that we’re going to say, okay, they’re going to build a school out here
so we’re going to run out and get some ground and bring a park right up next to
it. There’s a lot reasons they don’t like parks, big parks, next to their schools.
They like to control, especially in the elementary schools. They like to control
and we have no control what’s walking around in our parks at times. That’s my
thought on it. I’d like to see something, I’m like Councilwoman De Weerd,
something strong in there that it's a policy that we work with the schools. As far
as the ground and stuff goes, I don’t worry about it. This Comprehensive Plan is
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for ground that we own. Even though we all pay taxes on both of them. The
city—
*** End of Side Four ***
(inaudible)
Nary: That we create several paragraphs in the section on other lands available
that give some guidelines on how we partner with the schools in using those
lands. Is that what you’re proposing to see? I guess my question comes from
this. I don’t know that there’s a specific set of lines or rules we can put into print
in this program that’s going to apply in every situation. I’m not sure exactly what
you’re after. I don’t know if Tom is clear on it either. We have allowed for that
through the verbiage in that part of the Plan saying that we want to have an
access to those lands. We want to make that available to the recreation. I think
each school presents a unique situation and then to try to put that into verbiage
in this Plan of how to address it might become very, very cumbersome. If it's
grade school, it's one situation. If it's a middle school, it's another situation. If it's
just some tennis courts on the periphery of a high school, it's a whole different
situation. So I’m not sure exactly what you’re looking for. I guess what we’d ask
as a commission, is maybe some stronger guidance as to what you want to see.
Inasmuch, as even if you want to give us wording that you feel comfortable with,
we’d appreciate that guidance.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
De Weerd: Sure, I’ll word it. It's a policy that we’re going to strongly encourage,
certainly in your planning process. This is a vision for the city but it's a vision to
guide certain partnerships and to create certain opportunities. It's not so cut and
dried that you say in this area this will be done or in this area it can’t be or even
to set a policy on per elementary school or per middle school because everything
is certainly different. This is just a vision document and a guideline and
something you want to encourage and open dialogue and thought processes to
that. This partnership thing maybe is one those bones of contention because I
know from the minute the commission was born, this has been a goal of the
commission. That the schools and the City work hand in hand to provide this
kind of thing for our youth. Who cares who owns it? It need to serve our youth
and it needs to serve the recreational needs. All this Comprehensive Plan is to
provide language to form partnerships, to encourage certain approaches and
philosophies and dialogue to happen.
Corrie: I think it does make a difference who owns it. (inaudible) I don’t quite
understand that. The school system can partnership with us or they can’t. That’s
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up to them. We can’t control that even though we think that it's our taxes and
their taxes but who owns it, I don’t understand that.
Nary: I think Keith made a good point. In the eyes of the School District, the City
of Meridian holds no more sway over getting space on their fields than how or
any other organization that chooses to have a recreational program.
De Weerd: Those organizations will go to the school or to the City. It doesn’t
matter to them who owns it. It's green space and it's basically (inaudible)
Bird: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Okay. I—
Bird: That’s an organization and we should encourage that. I think we should
really be very strong. Tammy’s right. When she and I were both the first ones
on the commission. We want to partnership with the school but I don’t see where
it's a policy we should make. I don’t think it's that important to be in our
comprehensive part of it. Our comprehensive thing is, to me, to line out what we
want for a Park System in the future. It's like Pathways. Planning and Zoning
thinks the Pathway should be one place in their Comprehensive Plan. The Parks
think they should be in another place. It's one of the comments. How we get
them together, I don’t know. I hate to sit here and argue over a text in a policy. I
think we should have in there that it should be a policy. We don’t have a lot of
control over the School District. We can encourage.
Corrie: You don’t have any.
McCoy: Mr. Mayor, when I started on the Parks Commission, we worked very
hard on a big plan which was a vision for the Park System, a more or less a
Comprehensive Plan on how we should set up a Park System. After we
completed that, we all sat around and patted ourselves on the back and said
what a fine job we’ve done, now what do we do? It occurred to us, at that point,
that we really needed to have this Plan and this (inaudible)by the commission not
by a group of people telling us how to build a Park System. Which specifically
said, we know what we want for a Park System, how do specifically achieve it?
What steps do we go through to get there? This particular document, as Keith
states, Councilman Bird, sorry. It really is a very strict how-to. We’re saying
we’re going to build a Pathway with these specifications, we want to build them in
these spots. Planning and Zoning has made comments and recommendations
saying that we’d like to see them moved over to this spot or that spot. This is a
very dialed in, precise plan and not a plan that does well with visionary
statements. If the City Council awards the Park Commission $400,000 to spend
on parks, how does that money get spent? We turn to this Plan and we say,
well, here’s how we’re going to spend that money because it tell us how to spend
that money because this is how we’re supposed to sequence building a Park
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System. That’s really what this Plan is set up to do, specifically. To pursue this
whole thing with schools, is side tracking to an issue that might be better
contained in a separate document. This Plan is specifically set up just to say,
when we have money, where do we spend it, where is the next piece of growth
going to be and specifically how is the Commission go about making sure we
develop the proper Park Lands? That’s pretty much all I have to say. I hope that
makes sense. Any questions?
Kuntz: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Tom.
Kuntz: One last item, I know we’re running late here. We certainly support as a
staff and as a commission, partnering with the School District as often as
possible. I think our actions have shown that. One issue that has got to be
resolved, though, is in this Plan we are supporting community parks as far as the
City funding, construction and purchase of land. Neighborhood parks, we are not
funding in this Plan. When you’re talking about an elementary school site, with
them buying seven and us buying seven, we don’t have the funds to do that here.
That’s a key element that, I think, the City Council has got to decide. Are we
supporting this Plan, the Community parks, or do we want some neighborhood
parks mixed in there? We need some very clear direction on that. The other key
element is the School District. I can tell you right now, over the last 30 days, they
are not very supportive in partnerships with us for some reason. I’ve called the
Superintendent and asked for a meeting with her and the Parks Commission to
resolve some issues that we’ve been facing. The Kiwanis Park is a good issue
that came about three weeks ago. I have a letter on my desk talking about the
shared parking lot at Settler’s Park. For some reason, it's not a very cooperative
philosophy right now from some of their staff. I don’t know what’s going on. The
key element here is, community parks, not neighborhood. To partner on middle
school sites or high school sites, super. But they also maintain their facilities at a
different level than we do. We maintain our fields at a higher level than they do.
There’s going to have to be some of those things worked out. We support using
the taxpayers dollars to provide maximum green space in the community. What
looks good on paper and what works in the real world, sometimes are a little
ways apart. Thank you.
Corrie: Anyone else? Is this testimony you’re about to give the truth, the whole
truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Baker: Yes.
Corrie: Okay. Name and address, please.
Baker: Sherri Baker, 1746 Jericho in Meridian. First of all, the comment. On the
P&Z staff comments that relate the Trails Plan, I think they, obviously, had
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information that, perhaps, Jerry DeGrue didn’t have. Would that be correct, Tom,
as far as easements? The Plan, and again I emphasize the word Plan, was
drawn up on this Trails Plan and, of course, they’re referencing easements that
we don’t have and they’d rather have it go across here and not make another
railway crossing and et cetera, et cetera. It's just simply a Plan. If you were to
look at the City’s Comprehensive Plan as a developer and you came to the City
with a plat or the P&Z with a plat and said I would like to build this, then they’re
going to say, specifically, this won’t work in this area or you’ll need to make these
changes or these changes. That’s what I would presume that we would do in this
case as well. When we got to the point we were going to build some of these
trails and pathways, be it a subdivision was coming in there, and we said, hey,
this fits in with our Trail Plan or dollars became available to add to a Trails Plan.
Obviously, before we start building, we’re going to have to come to P&Z and say
can we do this and then we get their feedback with recommendations. Move it
here to cross at Ten Mile, don’t make a new crossing on the railroad, et cetera, et
cetera. I can’t see incorporating all those changes that they’ve listed to
completely redraw the Trails Plan because it is just a plan. The Plan was drawn
up to follow existing irrigation canals and, you know, Ten Mile Creek and those
types of things. I guess I’d like to know what you want to see from us. Do you
want to see us actually go in and change the map to encompass all of these
changes that P&Z is saying that they propose or do we address those when and
if such time any of these –I mean, some of these trails may not come up for five
to ten years and we maybe drafted a new Plan. I can’t see taking the time to go
in and completely redraw the map and change it completely when it's something
that may not happen. There may not be funds available for five, ten, fifteen years
on some of these areas that they’re talking about. So, I guess I’m asking, where
do you want us to go when we go back and meet as a commission to go over all
of these staff comments. Obviously, we’re going to have to do this and not get
this approved tonight.
Nary: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: I agree with what you’re saying in regards to the trails. I think, at least, the
way I read these staff comments, are more probably relative to a Comprehensive
Plan rather than this Plan. I think the Planning and Zoning staff and we’ve seen,
the Planning and Zoning Commission has seen, many people waving all these
plans and maps at us saying here’s what this is supposed to be and it doesn’t
look like that anymore. People are not understanding that. One way, though,
that we’ve tried to address that is, maybe not what it appears to planning staff is
wanting of basically redoing the map. But, at least, putting information so that
the public understands exactly what you just said. That these are merely
conceptual ideas of what Park System is going to look like, what the Trail System
may look like. That these are not schematic drawings of the City and the Trail
System. This is merely a conceptual idea of where they’re going to be.
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Baker: I believe that’s what the Plan states. I truly think that that’s what it says,
that this is, I mean, case in point being, the utility park and the whole hubbub and
uproar that’s going on about that. That was in the Comprehensive Plan. No one
is holding you to the fact that it said there was a Park on that — well, some
people are trying to hold you to that. I’m sorry. Said it the wrong way. They’re
trying to hold you to that. But, again, it's a Plan. That Comprehensive Plan was
approved like that, as being a Plan. It was stated like that. These are just simply
plans, guidelines for future planning. I think that’s what this Plan states. If
there’s some clearer way to state that this is simply a Plan and a guideline for a
possible Trail System, should we get one going and if somebody came to us and
said, ‘ we’re building this subdivision and we’d like to put a pathway around it or
through it that hooks up, where would be the best way to do and we could look at
our Plan and say, okay, that kind of fits but when we go to P&Z, they’d say you
need to move it to this corner, you don’t have an easement there, you need to,
you know, don’t cross the railroad, whatever. I just think that this states it's a
Plan. I don’t see how we can state it any clearer that none of this is set in stone.
Nary: Where’s the language that says that specifically? And it doesn’t say it on
the map.
Baker: No, not on the map but in the introduction to the Plan.
Nary: I guess that’s all I’m saying is that’s what people look at. They look at
maps. I understand what you’re saying. I think we all understand what you’re
saying. Five years from now when you’re not here and we’re not here, someone
is going to hand that map to somebody and say, there’s supposed to be a trail
right here.
Baker: If you look in the very first chapter in the introduction where it talks about
park and open space recommendation, identifies a concept for Parks, Trails and
Open Space. So that’s just a concept. Maybe if we added, specifically, on the
trails plan, Conceptual Trails Plan.
Nary: Conceptual Pathways or something—
Baker: Something like that.
Nary: Something so it's clear to folks. I think that may be (inaudible) this section
of what's being requested by Planning and Zoning is probably too much detail. I
do think what you’re asking just needs to be clearer to folks that that’s really all
this is. These are really conceptual, these are possible, these are merely ideas
of what we’d like to see. It's not written in stone. I do think people do look at it
that way.
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Baker: So when we bring this back to you, you’re not going to be looking for
every one of those changes on that trails to be made if we can state it clearly that
it's just a concept, it's just a conceptual plan.
Nary: I think as long as it says that, it's fine.
Bird: So is their, basically, Comprehensive Plan Map with their trail ways
(inaudible) suggested. That’s the way it should be. That’s why they shouldn’t be.
But it has to be clear like Mr. Nary says.
Nary: One of the things, Council Member De Weerd was saying, though, is that,
at least what I’m seeing in here, is the language that the planning staff is saying,
is that what’s proposed as pathways here isn’t like the one on the
Comprehensive Plan. There needs to be some reason to why those aren’t the
same. On the proposed Comprehensive Plan, surprisingly we don’t have that
map up here like we usually do—
Baker: The City’s Comprehensive Plan, right?
Nary: Yes, the City’s Comprehensive Plan there’s a proposed pathway, one that
goes all the way around the city, is ones that follow the canal. I guess that’s what
I’m reading here. You’re saying those aren’t the same in this Plan as they are in
the Comprehensive Plan.
Baker: I’m not seeing that. I’m not that that’s what they’re saying. I see that
they’re saying, for whatever reasons that they’ve explained here, you need to
move some of your pathways. I don’t see that they’re saying that this doesn’t
follow the City’s Comprehensive Plan. Actually, I haven’t sat down and looked at
the two of them, side by side. If that’s what you’re saying that they’re saying,
then we’ll go back and look at that but I don’t see that.
Nary: That’s what I thought their concern was. Maybe I’m misreading that, too.
Kuntz: Mr. Mayor. Just to interject real briefly. We look forward to being able to
address these issues and we appreciate the opportunity to work with P&Z
because I do it on a daily basis. When a plat comes through or they have a
pathway come through, we talk on the phone, we go out and look at the site and
make an evaluation of where that pathway should go. I think to address these
issues that they’ve brought up here, we look forward to the opportunity to work
with them and try and bring the two documents as closely in line as possible.
Thank you.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
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De Weerd: I agree with the comment you just made. They need to. They need
to be the same because we might have (inaudible) at one and another look at
another and it’s like, get your visions together here. We can’t say this is just a
plan on one hand and then your statement that this is a specific plan and it needs
to be on here. On the other hand, I’m sorry, I’m confused. I’ll get back one more
time, to the seven acre next to a seven acre, which is as the staff comments
point out, roughly fifteen acres, is that a community size park and all I’m saying
is, if there are going to be partnerships, whether it's near and elementary school
or a middle school, and we abut theirs and it's all going to count as open space.
Is that seven acres or ten acres going to be allowed to be bought and purchased
next to their land to make a community size park? That needs to be addressed
in a Plan, who is supposed to be specific and it just needs to be done. I’m not
saying it will ever happen in our lifetime. Especially if we look at the last bit of
history, you don’t see those kinds of efforts. I would hope, in someone’s lifetime,
it will happen and those tax entities will come together and can make something
like that work. It just needs to have language that would accommodate if it ever
could happen.
Kuntz: One last comment, Mr. Mayor. I know that this pathway plan is not
specific enough for our needs on a day to day basis. That’s why I think to be
able to say if there’s discrepancies between this Plan and the Comprehensive
Plan, the Comprehensive Plan should take priority. If we want to do this right, we
need to spend some money and go out and do a good Pathway Plan. Thank
you.
De Weerd: But, Tom, you’re saying that—then we’re going to have three
different plans if you’re going to work on the plan that the Pathway Committee
gave you and bring that up at some later time, we’re going to have three different
plans out there. At least, this should align itself to what’s in the Comprehensive
Plan, which we have received testimony on in the Comprehensive Plan process.
So we can’t ignore that testimony and not have it the same in this Plan because
they do reference each other. It is better bring them in alignment.
Corrie: All this conversation makes me wonder what my meeting with the
Meridian School Superintendent is going to be in Sun Valley. She called and
wanted to have a meeting with me. Take a couple hours so I should have a
(inaudible) well that’s (inaudible) at the Metro Leadership Conference.
(inaudible)
Corrie: We’re at the same meeting so we’re not just having a separate meeting
in Sun Valley.
De Weerd: Talk about taxpayer money.
Bird: Oh, man.
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Corrie: Okay. Any other testimony? Get back to the point here. Okay. So,
Council, where do you want to go here? I have an idea but—
Bird: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I think from listening to comments that we’d better table or continue this
public hearing for a couple of weeks and let Tom and the Parks and Recreation
Commission go over these staff comments from Planning and Zoning. Then
bring it back to us and see if it's going to affect their plan too. I think they need to
look it over. I don’t know if the Parks Commission has seen these comments at
th
all until just tonight. This was in our packet the 28. With that, I’d move that we
th
continue the Public Hearing on the Parks Comprehensive Plan to May 7, 2002.
Kuntz: Council Member Bird?
Bird: Yes.
th
Kuntz: Our next Parks Commission meeting is the 8.
Bird: So let’s take it to the—I’ll reform my motion to continue this Public Hearing
st
for the Parks Comprehensive Plan to May 21, 2002.
(inaudible discussion)
Kuntz: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Tom
Kuntz: The representatives from the Parks Commission would like to propose
th
they have a special meeting to address these and bring it back to you on the 8
as Council Member Bird originally proposed.
th
Corrie: On the 7?
th
Kuntz: The 7, I’m sorry.
Corrie: Okay.
Bird: How many times do you want me to change it?
Kuntz: Twice.
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
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th
Bird: I change my motion back then, to continue the Public Hearing to May 7,
2002.
De Weerd: Second. Before it changes.
Corrie: Motion has been made and second. Any further discussion?
Nary: Mr. Mayor. Just so they don’t—I think we have a Public Hearing
st
scheduled on May 1 for the Comprehensive Plan, just so, I know the Parks
Commission normally meets here so they won’t be able to meet here on that day.
Just so they understand that.
Corrie: Good point. Any further discussion? All those in favor of the continued
motion say aye. All ayes. Motion carried.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
De Weerd: Apparently, the silver lining on this is, BCA and Association of
Realtors weren’t here so you must have solved some issues with them.
Corrie: One of the big ones that Bruce did mention that they were concerned
about and that was the meeting with me too. They were concerned about the
area we were going to be using. Okay. Thank you, Bruce. Appreciate that.
Okay. We’ve got three things left. Discussion of the Strategic Plan, Item #11,
and I believe if I have received the information correctly, the Fire Department had
three things that they wanted to add that had been left off by Mr. Lupe was
highlighted here to increase the Department’s training capacity to develop and
maintain the technical skills needed to perform on emergencies. Add a training
tower with burn room capabilities and sufficient property to allow for realistic
training. The approximate cost of the facility with that land is $330,000. The land
would be approximately $200,000. The other is to increase by 100% the
Department’s ability to provide a realistic, yet controlled, training for emergency
scene operations. Is that what we see there? Okay.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
De Weerd: Those are all under pretty much one topic area and that would be to
take what was in the Department’s evaluation, as far as developing training
facilities in a program for the Fire Department. Somehow, that got left out and it
was caught yesterday. This would have to be framed and written in. I would feel
comfortable with just that reading, that with that in mind, that it's to focus on the
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April 23, 2002
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training capabilities and facility in the Fire Department that we can go ahead and
move forward with this. It's just a matter of the verbiage of it.
Item 11. Discussion of Strategic Plan:
Corrie: Okay. Any other comments for the Strategic Plan? Okay. We are going
to be changing the letterhead to follow the Department’s letters on the same
thing. That’s being done. Anything else?
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor, only on the Strategic Plan, at some point in the near
future, making some decisions on how to monitor progress or put in to place
action items that Council might also have some responsibility for. How we want
to kind of focus on the accountability aspects and follow through.
Corrie: A lot of it will come out of the quarterly review that comes out of my office
for each one of the departments. That will be one of the ways. However, what
else would you like, as far as the Council’s ramifications and what they want to
see? I get a report every quarter and evaluate those. Then you will get a copy of
that evaluation. I wanted to make sure you knew that you’d be getting that.
Whatever else you need to do, we can discuss that.
De Weerd: So by topic area, you know, we have something in Transportation,
and Economic Development and those issues. I don’t know if you can
specifically assign them to a Department but certainly you could.
Corrie: No, you can't. Yes, or you could assign a Council person to over do that
if you want to do that, too.
De Weerd: Well, yes. We don’t have to solve it tonight.
Corrie: That’s one way you could do that. If you want to have somebody that’s
(inaudible) for a few of those and be responsible for the review and get a report
back from the Council. I will give you a report back of everything that they have
done. You may need to want specific area that they’re not under.
De Weerd: Well, in the Plan, it's easy. Well, I won't say it's easy. You have, by
Department, certain measurement tools. We broke out thirteen different areas of
high importance to the City. The Mayor and the Council as a whole, needs to
make sure that those have over-sight, as they’re progressing in their own
Department strategic visions and that sort of thing, how they overlap into the
thirteen different areas. How do we measure that? Who’s going to oversee it?
I’m hearing, you are.
Corrie: Any help that you want to give (inaudible) whoever. I would suggest that
you (inaudible)
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De Weerd: I think you’re great.
Corrie: I may be asking for some of that greatness to come from the Council as
well.
Bird: We’ll give you our help when you as us to. You can do it. I’ve got faith.
Corrie: Anything else on the Strategic Plan?
(inaudible)
Corrie: I think that’s they’ve done here, isn’t that right?
(inaudible)
De Weerd: It is under one topic, their training facility.
(inaudible)
Bird: That’s right.
Overland: Do you want me to add that word for word the way it is on that sheet
or the verbiage you want to use? I guess I just want to make sure that it's stated
exactly the way the Fire Department wants it stated.
De Weerd: Well, then ask the Fire Department. My point was to the Fire
Department. If that training facility is not in their Strategic Plan, which we base
our budget request on, don’t come asking for a budget request because it's not in
there. I thought they gave it to you, Anita, in a concise manner. I did not realize
they gave it to you in pieces. The Mayor, I’m sure can inform the Fire
Department they should write it.
Overland: Can I also (inaudible) that the foldout sheet, you really didn’t care for
the color that (inaudible) chose? (inaudible) prefer, was that purple? Is there
another color, a softer color or lighter color?
Nary: We looked at that sample. I guess what we were told was that was a
sample color. I guess my assumption was that the color would be reflective of
the logo of the City. That blue and gray, that sort of look, rather than purple. So
that would look more consistent with the rest of the documents.
Item 12. Discussion of Personnel Policy:
Corrie: Remind me tomorrow and we’ll talk to the Fire Department. Because we
can get that taken care of real quick. All right. Anything else on this Strategic
Plan? Okay. The Personnel Policy.
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April 23, 2002
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Skeggs: We saved the best for last.
Corrie: Shall we take a break?
Skeggs: A break? It's past my bedtime. Council Members and Mayor, on April
st
1, I gave you a draft copy of the Employee Handbook and a Standard Operating
Procedure Manual to review. Since then, the Legal Department’s labor attorney,
Julie Fisher, completed the final review on the handbook and manual and made
some minor changes. I’ve made those changes but on the copies that you have,
it's not reflected. I also gave Chief Worley a copy of the handbook to review
against his Police Procedure Manual. We still need to get together actually to
review those to make sure that we don’t have any discrepancies, that we’re in
line because I know he’s looking at implementing his manual in May. I’ve also
changed the handbook format to make it easier to read. You have a paragraph
summary format. The new format has them separated by sections and by topics.
It actually follows more in line with the SOP Manual. I gave Bill Nichols the new
copy with the new format tonight. The hard copy that you have, I put the SOP in
a soft bind copy in case you decide that the employees are going to get the SOP.
This is the format that it will look like. It won’t be in a hardbound format. It will be
more like the Employee Handbook. The difference between the handbook and
the SOP is that the handbook states that the City policies and what the
employees need to know. The SOP goes into the procedures and responsibilities
for the policy. An example would be under the compensation section,
performance increases. The handbook states when the increases are given and
how they’re given and in the Standard Procedure Manual, it explains further the
details of the process, the procedure. It says, like, HR on a monthly basis, sends
out the performance reviews to Department heads and then they have to—
they’re responsible for returning them back two weeks before the actual review
date is due. What we need to discuss tonight is, basically, what format you
would like to be given to the City employees. You know, the Handbook or the
SOP. Julie Fisher, the labor attorney from Bill Nichols’ office, recommended that
the City give employees the Employee Handbook format and make available the
SOP Manual in each department for future reference. She didn’t think that the
employees need to have specific procedures in carrying out the policies. I
understand from Mr. Nichols that he’s had discussions with Mrs. Fisher on that.
Bill, would you like to comment on that?
Nichols: Mr. Mayor, Members of the Council. Part of the thinking was that
there’s a number of items in the policy, the overall policy and procedure manual,
which is detailed. It's not necessary for an employee to understand what’s
expected of them and what will happen with regard to certain events. Pauline
just gave you an example of those. In effect, a handbook is a smaller version but
still has the important things in it. The handbook also contains a disclaimer at the
beginning of the handbook that says we’ve attempted to make sure that the
handbook is consistent with the policies, that the policies are the overall
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governing document. We may want to highlight that or bold it in the handbook as
a means of instructing the employees that if they some more detail they can look
at the Standard Procedure Manual on that issue. The only issue about having a
separate handbook and having from the policies, you have to make sure that
they are as consistent as you can humanly make them. If you do make any
policy changes to the manual, that you also provide employees with a copy of
those changes for their handbook. That’s really a managerial, administrative
function, one in which I’m confident that Pauline and her staff can do and do well.
That’s where you get into the—even if you distributed the whole policies, if you
make any changes, you’ve got to make sure that those changes get out to all of
the employees. Either way, you have something that’s got to get out them that
shows—
Skeggs: Right. That’s why we put it in this kind of binder. They can take it out,
we can issue a new policy and say take a certain section out and replace it with
this section and also have them sign an acknowledgement form for the new
policy. That way we know that they were given that and we’ll put that in their
personnel file.
Nary: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: I’d like to commend Pauline on this document. I think it's very well done.
It's a lot of information. I guess my only concern is, there’s so much information
in here that I’m not sure everyone is going to understand it very well. I think if
you give them both books, they have a better chance of understanding it. I
wasn’t here when the decision was made to make them into two books but I
wouldn’t have been in favor of that. I think it's very confusing to people to have
two different books as to policies and procedures and rules and guidelines that
people need to follow. It makes more sense to me to have one. Then when a
change is made, we don’t have to go find the other book to make that it's updated
properly, it's all one document. The other thing that’s a positive to me for the
employees is there is a lot of, Mr. Nichols is right, there's a lot of information in
this SOP that probably isn’t relevant to most employees. But it is to some and to
tell employees here’s our policy in regards to harassment in the workplace and
here’s what we’re going to do when you’re harassed. This is how we’re going to
address it is a very positive message to send people. If we keep how we’re
going to address it in a separate binder, in a separate place, that information
doesn’t get out there as easily. If it's all given to the employees, then they all
understand, we really are concerned about all of these issues in here. We’re not
only going to tell you what the rules are, we’re going to tell you what we’re going
to do to respond to it when the rules aren’t being followed. I don’t think there’s
anything wrong with that. The City is bound by whether it's in one book or two,
we’re bound to follow whatever we tell people we’re going to do. But the other
issue I was curious about, I didn’t see any input from the different departments. I
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April 23, 2002
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know you said tonight that Chief Worley hasn’t had time to review this in relation
to his policy manual for the Police Department. But I haven’t seen any of the
department heads’ response back that they’ve had an opportunity to review this,
provide some comment, give us some feedback as to how they think this relates
to them.
Skeggs: The department heads were the first ones that review the policy
manual. We sat down several sessions and we made changes and then from
those changes then we’ve sent it to the Legal Department. We changed the
format of the Policy Manual from when the supervisors and manager, you know,
when they reviewed it. The wording is basically the same. We just changed the
format. But they did have that opportunity to review that, make comments, make
changes to that. During that process, they had recommended in the SOP on
page 44, it talks about reimbursement for travel and lodging. When we reviewed
the handbook, I had initially put in a Federal Per Diem in there, and the
department heads felt that they wanted Council and Mayor, you guys, to decide
what that would be. I had it broken out by breakfast, lunch and dinner but we’re
looking at whether it be broken out that way, daily rate, weekly rate. Actually,
accounting has recommended, if it could be done in a daily, because it's easier
for them to track. That was the only area that the department heads had wanted
Council, Mayor’s feedback as far as how much they want to assign to that per
diem.
Nary: So are you comfortable then that the department heads have had enough
input for us to approve this tonight, that they aren’t going to come back and say,
well—
Skeggs: The only one who really hasn’t had the opportunity is Chief Worley,
because Bill Gordon, Chief Gordon was in place at the time we reviewed it. So
that’s why I gave it to him, where he could review it and then we could sit down
and discuss it.
Worley: Mr. Mayor, Mr. Nary. My real goal in this review, as well as, I agree with
Mr. Nary that we don’t want to have two manuals. There are a lot of things in
police operations that would not normally be addressed in a City Manual but part
of, in fact a large part of my review will be, I don’t want to cover anything in the
Police Manual that’s already covered in the City Manual. We incorporate some
things by reference but we’re not trying to duplicate verbiage or contradict that
and that’s really the basis of my review.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
De Weerd: I guess, you know, I like the fact that our department heads and staff
have had an opportunity to view this but have they had an opportunity to view the
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April 23, 2002
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final version after their comments have been incorporated? What Gary might
have commented back, Tom contradicted that comment with his own, who’s
comment did you take, does Tom know you took Gary’s over his. You know, the
end result needs to go back and say, this is the end result, staff, do you feel
comfortable with this because we want to give it to Council to take action on and
we want to make sure you’re comfortable with what's being proposed.
Skeggs: Right. I agree with that. You know, to have them go back and review
the final product. I think that that’s a good idea and I agree with that. I know
when we had, initially, it was going to be scheduled for the workshop. That was
going to be my recommendation at the workshop. No, I’m not looking at it getting
approved tonight. All I want to know is which manual we’re looking at for I can
give that to the department heads. I did explain that to them in the Department
Head meeting that we had, too. I didn’t know which ones that you guys were
going to approve and once I had that, I would make sure that they got a copy of
it.
Corrie: In all due respect to you, Pauline, I did go through, we had everybody’s
that went through it. They made their comments. I went through it, looked at it,
then looked at this one. It's pretty close to what everybody had in there. I think
you’re absolutely right and so is Mrs. De Weerd, that we give them a chance to
look at this one more time and see if their comments were close enough to what
they said. I would like to have the Council either consider what this, on page 44,
is going to be on your breakfast, lunch and dinner. I think in my case, I’m not
trying to be difficult here but I can’t go back to Washington, D.C. with a $10.00
breakfast, a $15.00 lunch and a $40.00 dinner. My breakfast cost that much and
it's too bad. As a matter of fact, I didn’t come out even anyway, even when I did
eat. I think that the Council does need to think about that because even a hotel
in Washington, D.C. with a special discount to all the Mayors, it comes out to
about $240.00 a day.
Bird: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I agree with you and I think, well, you know, I can send a crew to Baker
City, Oregon, I can send two guys over there and it costs me less than one guy in
Sun Valley for one night. I think you just cover the cost as long as they’re
reasonable. They bring in their receipts. I’ve had my guys on the per diem day
and everything else and I don’t like it. Just cover the cost and they’re not going
to abuse it. If they do, you don’t send them out again.
Skeggs: I know accounting had stated they would prefer to have a standard set
because each department does their own thing—
*** End of Side Five ***
Meridian City Council Meeting
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Skeggs: --between that where some spend a lot and others will not. So they
wanted to have it universal among the departments.
Nary: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: I agree with Mr. Bird. I don’t think you can have a per diem policy that’s
very effective. I don’t think it's very reasonable to want to have an employee or a
department head go to a conference in Chicago and them you can eat $15.00. I
don’t know that, other than a hot dog stand, you’re going to get that. I really don’t
think it makes much sense. I think we have as part of the Strategic Plan, the
whole intent was to create a management team with the Council, the Mayor, the
department heads in administering the work of the City. They have a budget for
training. They have to work within that budget. They have to figure out who they
can afford to send and how much they can afford to send them for and they have
to be reasonable. Whether it's the department head being accountable to the
Mayor because the department head wants to stay in the $500.00 a night suite
and be accountable to the Mayor for that or whether is a member of the
department being accountable to the Department Head as to what's reasonable.
I don’t see any other way to do that. I think you provide the receipts. I think you
pay for people’s reasonable amount of meals and they have to justify why that is.
Everywhere is different. You could probably eat fairly inexpensively if you go to a
conference in Pocatello than if you go to a conference in Miami. So I think you
have to take all of that into consideration. I guess I don’t see the need in the
policy. I have a policy book in front of me that I have to use a lot. It pretty much
says that. That it's reasonable amounts and the department heads have to
provide it and the only thing that deals with a per diem is to allow the employee to
get pre-travel expenses pre-cut ahead of time so the employee doesn’t have to
fork out their own money for cab fare or transit or the first couple days of meals
or something like that and have to fork it out of their pocket. And then the
employee again accounts for, provide receipts, if they don’t spend all the money,
they give it back. If they spend it all and in excess of that, they have receipts to
justify that. I know what I’ve found in our business is that the employees who do
abuse that privilege of doing that, generally don’t go twice anywhere. That
seems to have cured a lot of people’s abuse. I think if we’re going to expect
people to act professionally, we’re going to treat them professionally as well. I
don’t think there’s a real concern to me of people abusing that but if they do,
that’s what the department heads, that’s what the Mayor, that’s what this Council
can deal with it after the fact.
Corrie: They have a budget and they know that they’re not going to go over that
anyway. I think each department can handle that. I agree with Councilman Nary
on that.
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De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
De Weerd: I think as far as a firm policy, it sounds reasonable that you do come
up with the per diem for the advance and set a policy to get paid with receipt
only. Again, it's the accountability factor that what you have on that receipt is
what you feel comfortable, your supervisor or your department head or going into
the budget states. That does build in your accountability. It's too hard even with
Federal guidelines. Your cost of living is—they’re not always in touch with what's
going on even in some of these smaller resort communities that don’t show up on
the Fed’s radar screen that they’re expensive areas. You’re accountable to your
department head and he’s accountable to the budget and—
Skeggs: I know this was a recommendation made by accounting but I don’t
know their reasoning behind it and there’s nobody here from accounting to give
you an explanation as to why they wanted a breakdown. But they were the ones
that had recommended that.
Bird: I can tell you why. Then they don’t have to check the receipts but the
department head can do that and okay it and send it through. They don’t have to
check every receipt. Let the department head do it. That why accounting—you
go around any accountants, they don’t like it. Makes them have to do something.
Corrie: My secretary makes sure I’ve got receipts for everything. When I don’t—
Bird: I get the same thing from ours.
Corrie: Okay.
De Weerd: You don’t have to report this.
Bird: No, don’t report it.
Nary: Council, I’ve got to make a copy of the regulation that we’ve used and
maybe Pauline can use that as some guide.
Bird: Sure.
(inaudible)
Skeggs: So are we looking at the SOP Manual then, is that what we’re looking at
to give to employees?
Corrie: I think so. That would be my preference. Council seems to think the
same way here. I think what we need to do is get a copy to all of our department
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April 23, 2002
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heads, let them review it, get it back to us and we can review what we have here
and then we can make (inaudible) to that.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
De Weerd: I guess it's not that I think bigger is better but, you know, it's
consistent and everyone is working off the same document. It's been already
stated, you know, I think it would be cleaner and easier if we all work off of the
same document and not have to keep track of who has which and if we
remember to change one and not the other, it just sets us up for the possibility of
something slipping through the crack.
Skeggs: No, I agree that we would only need to use one. I just did both of them
because I’m so tired working this and reworking it that I said I’m going to get it
done either way, whatever one they want, it’ll be at the point for completion.
De Weerd: Thank you. It's very well thought through. It's a work of art.
Corrie: I will entertain a motion to adjourn right after I tell you something. I’m
th
going to call a special meeting on next Tuesday, April the 30. I’m going to let
the City Attorney tell you why. And then I have one more announcement and
then we’ll go home. Mr. Nichols.
Nichols: Mr. Mayor, Members of the Council. As you will recall, one of the
issues that’s been before the Council is the white sewer trunk project bid award.
There was an apparent low bidder and then a bid protest and a lawsuit and one
thing and another and essentially, the court has said that since the Council has
not yet awarded the bid, the Council needs to do that. In order to do that, we
need to have a hearing and that hearing would be next Tuesday so that the
apparent low bidder and the protesting bidder can come before the Council and
lay out their respective reasons as to who is right. I will work with Mr. Smith and
Mr. Watson to marshal the documents and get those to you before the hearing so
that you have a list of the pertinent documents that you need to look at and
review ahead of time. Copies of the same will be provided to the attorneys for
both, the apparent low bidder and the protestor. I will also work with the Mayor to
develop some, if you will, hearing procedures so that we know who’s going first
and how it’s to be conducted so that we have some semblance of order in due
process in connection with this so that we can move forward one way or another
with this particular project. So that’s the reason for the special meeting.
Corrie: I really to have you coming back on a Tuesday that’s a fifth but it has to
th
be done by the 7 for the court and it had to be seven days before (inaudible)
Yes, Mr. Bird.
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
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Bird: One of the documents will be the specifications of the bids that we will
receive?
Nichols: Mr. Mayor, Councilman Bird, Members of the Council. We’ll provide the
information to bidders the actual bids, the bid protest, the response letter, follow
up information that was obtained by the consulting engineer. There are a variety
of documents. We’ll get all of those, we’ll number them and so forth so it will be
a list of proposed exhibits and then the two contractors may propose additional
exhibits but at least we’ll provide probably more than you need to see but we’re
going to try to be as thorough as we can. That information of bidders will be one
of the things that’s provided.
Bird: (inaudible) plan, set of specs and a set of plans there. Will be on display.
Nichols: Mr. Mayor, Members of the Council. I didn’t know if the plans
themselves are that important with regard to the deal but if you want to have a
set of the plans available at City Hall to review because they’re—
Bird: I don’t know about the plans but I do want a set of specifications here.
Nichols: The spec book?
Bird: Yes, specifications. That tells the bidder what he has to bid. And how he
bids it.
Nary: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nichols: Mr. Mayor, Council Members. Councilman Bird, do you want a
complete set of bid documents including technical specifications or are you
talking about just the portion of the specifications that the bidder would actually
work on?
Bird: Don’t you have section 1 and 1600 in there that gives the instructions on
how to bid it and what they’re expected to bid and how they bid it, what papers
they fill out and all that stuff?
Nichols: Yes. Correct. That’s all attached to the technical specifications as well.
Bird: It should be in front of the—
Nichols: It's the whole booklet. So that’s you’re after.
Bird: I want a spec book here.
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Nichols: Okay.
Corrie: Also, the attorney has advised that we not discuss this among ourselves.
Also, the court did say that we can make a decision after that hearing who we’re
going to deal with. I can't sign it until after the judge says yeah or nay. Then one
th
other thing, as you know, May 28 is a preliminary voting day so will probably
th
have to go our City Council meeting on Wednesday, the 29 of May. So just
judge your calendars to that one.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd:
Bird: What are you going to ask?
De Weerd: Well, next Tuesday is the fifth Tuesday of the month, which we
traditionally or are supposed to have, a joint meeting with the Planning and
Zoning Commission. We were going to go over our sewer master plan and, has
that been delayed or—
Corrie: I imagine, at this point, that this other takes precedent from a court order.
We can try it again in a separate off-night in the Council if you want but I didn’t
have a whole lot of choice here. So we would have to, hopefully if you want to do
it at another meeting, we get together with the Planning and Zoning people and
make a different night. That does preempt that other meeting, yes.
De Weerd: So you’ll let them know?
Corrie: Yes. Okay, any—
Nary: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Nary:
Nary: I was just going to remind the rest of the Council, Friday was the day we
all agreed to, I think we’re going to be at the Arbor Day at the Middle School
(inaudible)
(inaudible discussion amongst Council)
th
Bird: Friday the 26, isn’t it?
th
Corrie: Friday the 26, at 2:00. How many are going to Sun Valley on that
Leadership with Boise Metro? Anybody? Okay. I think-Will, are you going?
Okay. If we don’t get back, I think we will, I’ll just make sure we do. Because I
think it's over at noon and I’ll leave—
Meridian City Council Meeting
April 23, 2002
Page 83 of 83
Bird: Oh, for Arbor Day?
th
Corrie: No. This is on the 30.
th
Bird: The 30. That’s what I thought.
thth
Corrie: (inaudible) the 29 and then 30 come back. So-
De Weerd: Now that I’ve figured out how to use your pager, that’s—
Corrie: Okay. I will entertain a motion (inaudible)
Nary: Motion to adjourn.
De Weerd: Second
Corrie: All those in favor of the motion say aye. Motion approved at 11:05.
Adjournment. Thank you.
Meeting adjourned at 11:05 P.M.
(TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS)
APPROVED:
/ /
ROBERT D. CORRIE, MAYOR DATE APPROVED
ATTESTED:
WILLIAM G. BERG, JR., CITY CLERK