2010 06-08Meridian City Council Workshop Meeting June 8 2010
A meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 6:00 p.m., Tuesday, June
8, 2010, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd.
Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, President David Zaremba, Keith Bird,
Brad Hoaglun, and Charlie Rountree.
Others Present: Bill Nary, Jaycee Holman, Pete Friedman, Matt Ellsworth, Jeff Lavey,
Mark Niemeyer, Tom Barry, Clint Dolsby, Caleb Hood, Steve Siddoway, Stacy
Kilchenmann, Tracy Basterrechea Johnson, and Dean Willis.
Item 1: Roll-call Attendance:
Roll call.
X David Zaremba X Brad Hoaglun
X Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird
X Mayor Tammy de Weerd
De Weerd: Okay. I will go ahead and get tonight's meeting underway. I appreciate all
of you joining us here tonight. For the record, it is Tuesday, June 8th, at 6:00 o'clock.
We will start tonight's meeting with roll call attendance.
Item 2: Pledge of Allegiance by Troop #174 Sunnybrook Ward
De Weerd: Item No. 2 is our Pledge of Allegiance. Tonight we will be led in the pledge
by Troop 174 from the Sunnybrook Ward and we have leading us Andrew Bishop,
Brandon Novak and Jeremiah McCorby. I'm sorry, Jeremiah, if I messed up your name.
If you will come forward all rise and join us in the pledge.
(Pledge of Allegiance recited.)
De Weerd: And if I could present you with a pin each. If you will just come forward.
Thank you for leading us tonight.
Item 3: Adoption of the Agenda
De Weerd: Okay. Our next item, Item No. 3 is adoption of the agenda.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: A couple of items to note on the agenda before we adopt it. Under the
Consent Agenda, Item 4-L, that resolution number is 10-726. 4-M is resolution number
10-727. And 4-N is resolution number 10-728. And 4-O is resolution 10-729. Also,
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June 8, 2010
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under Department Reports, Item 6. Item F, the city scholarship program update, there
is a request to vacate that. We'd also like to add under Item 6, Department Reports,
two items for Public Works, J and K, budget reallocation for Well 28 pumping facilities in
a not to exceed amount of 180,000 dollars. And a budget amendment for sewer line
replacements in a not to exceed amount 125,000 dollars. And, then, under Item 8,
Ordinances. 8-A, that ordinance number is 10-1449. 8-B is ordinance number 10-1450.
And under Item 9-A that is Executive Session, that will be per Idaho State Code 67-
2345(1)(c) and (f) for tonight. And with that, Madam Mayor, I move we adopt the
amended agenda.
Zaremba: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second. Mr. Nary, if you will, for clarification, under
Item 9-A, define what (f) is.
Nary: (f) is for potential litigation.
De Weerd: Thank you very much. Okay. With that motion and second to approve the
adoption of the agenda as amended, all those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion
carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 4: Consent Agenda
A. March 23, 2010 City Council Pre-Council Meeting Minutes
B. May 26, 2010 Special City Council Meeting Minutes
C. June 1, 2010 City Council Pre-Council Meeting Minutes
D. Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Subrecipient
Agreement with Meridian Development Corporation for a Not
to Exceed Amount of $55,000.00
E. Personal Services Agreement for transcription services for the
Meridian Historic Preservation Commission
F. Professional Services Agreement with Larry Limm for
Marketing Consultation Services Not-To-Exceed $2,100.00
G. Task Order #10162A for Meridian Wastewater Treatment Plant
Blower Replacement with CH2M Hill for aNot-To-Exceed
Amount of $60,695.00 Pursuant to the Master Agreement
Approved by City Council April 13, 2010
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H. Task Order #10010 with CH2M Hill (Master Agreement Dated 4-
13-2010), for Engineering Design Services of the Ground
Reservoir #2 Project for aNot-To-Exceed Amount of
$165,613.00
I. Task Order #10022 for Meridian Wastewater Treatment Plant
Facilities Plan with CH2M Hill for aNot-To-Exceed Amount of
$399,920.00 Pursuant to the Master Agreement Approved by
City Council April 13, 2010
J. Final Order Granting an 18 Month Time Extension for
Bridgetower Crossing Subdivision No. 14 (TE 10-015)
K. Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law for Approval: RZ 09-
006 Southridge West Commercial by Cabra Creek, LLC
Located at the Northeast Corner of S. Ten Mile Road and W.
Overland Road: Request for Rezone of 9.33 Acres From the R-
8Zoning District to the C-C Zoning District
L. Resolution No. 10-726: A Resolution of the Mayor and the
City Council of the City of Meridian to Amend the Text of the
City of Meridian Comprehensive Plan to Integrate Text
Changes Associated with the Concurrent Map Amendment and
Adding Text to Clarify and Define Fire Station and School
Sites; to Update Old Text in the Recreation and Park Section of
the Plan (Chapter VI and VII) and Incorporate Language
Regarding the East 3rd Street Alignment as Recommended by
the Meridian Planning Department; and Providing an Effective
Date
M. Resolution No. 10-727: A Resolution of the Mayor and City
Council of the City Meridian Amend the Future Land Use Map
of the 2002 Comprehensive Plan by Replacing the
Public/Quasi-Public Designation with a New Civic Designation;
Changing the Future Land Use Designations for Current and
Former Churches and Hospitals that are Designated
Public/Quasi-Public; Adding New Symbols to the Legend for
Future Facilities (i.e., Schools, Parks, Fire Stations, Transit
Stations); Incorporating the Land Use Designations of the Ten
Mile Interchange Specific Area Plan; Removing the Water and
Sewer Line Designations; Updating the Roadways Designated
as Entry Way Corridors; and Removing the Roadway
Classifications by City of Meridian Planning Department; and
Providing an Effective Date
N. Resolution No. 10-728: A Resolution of the Mayor and City
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June 8, 2010
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Council of the City of Meridian to Amend the Future Land Use
Map of the 2002 Comprehensive Plan for 60.74 Acres Known
as Southridge West Commercial by Cabra Creek, LLC Located
on the Northeast Corner of S. Ten Mile Road and W. Overland
Road, Meridian, Idaho from Medium High Density Residential
(MHDR), Medium Density Residential (MDR), Green Space and
Park Land (PARK) and Mixed Use Commercial (MUC) to Mixed
Employment (ME)
O. Resolution No. 10-729: A Resolution Vacating of a Portion of
the Public Utility, Irrigation, and Drainage Easements on the
Interior Lot Lines of Lots 43-45, Block 32, Bridgetower
Crossing Subdivision No. 12 and Lots 15-17, Block 36,
Bridgetower Crossing Subdivision No. 11; and Vacate a
Portion of the Public Domestic Water and Sewer Easements on
Lots 15-17, Block 36, Bridgetower Crossing Subdivision No.
11, Located in the Southwest Corner of W. McMillan Road and
N. Linder Road, in the Northeast'/4 of Section 35, Township 4
North, Range 1 West, Boise Meridian, City of Meridian, Ada
County, Idaho; and Providing an Effective Date
De Weerd: Item 4 is our Consent Agenda
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor`?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Under the Consent Agenda as noted, Item 4-L is resolution 10-726. 4-M is
resolution 10-727. 4-N is resolution number 10-728. And 4-O is resolution number 10-
729. And with those, Madam Mayor, I move approval of the Consent Agenda and for
the Mayor to sign and Clerk to attest.
Zaremba: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the Consent Agenda. If there is
no discussion, Madam Clerk, will you call roll.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carries.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 5: Items Moved From Consent Agenda
De Weerd: Okay. There were no items moved from the Consent Agenda on No. 5.
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Item 6: Department Reports
A. Planning Department: Franklin Road Design -Median and
Access Discussion with StafF and Property Owners
De Weerd: So, we will move to Item 6-A under Department Reports and begin tonight's
Department Reports section with our Planning Department.
Hood: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. Quite a few items on
Departments Reports tonight, so I will try to make this brief, but it's an important topic,
as are the other ones. As you know, in June of 2007 the city adopted the Ten Mile
Interchange Specific Area Plan, in addition to refining and reevaluating the future land
use designations in that area, the plan also outlined the roadway network plan that will
compliment those future land uses and achieve the desired character for the area. The
plan indicates in a narrative description and lays out some particular cross-sections for
the roadways in that area. On the screen you can see three. There is actually five that
are shown in the plan. Sections A and B are the ones that are mentioned in the text of
the plan for the arterial network. C through E are for the collector roadways. The plan
also identifies Franklin Road between Black Cat and Linder, a two mile stretch, as a four
lane parkway with landscape medians and limited access points. I have shown a
different cross-section, although it's consistent with the street section B as shown here.
This is -- this is actually a rendering that ACHD put together in one of their flyers that
was sent out to the property owners after the medians and bike lanes were added at the
request of the city. Creating the Ten Mile plan, the city and HGR, our consultants, did
send out postcards and letters and a-mails to those that we had a-mail addresses for
the charrette and the other public involvement processes that we were going through in
2006 in compiling this plan. Consistent with the plan and as requested by the city,
ACHD has designed the Franklin -Ten Mile -Linder roadway widening project with the
landscaped center medians. And, then, they have also put into their design plans curb
returns for the future roadway network collectors, it would be sticky in this one mile
section where this roadway with the E label and this one with the Dcross-section shown
there, they are actually putting curb returns in there for the future extension of those
roadways with their projects. ACRD is currently in their right of way phase of that one
mile road widening project and are -- with construction planned for 2012. There are
multiple property owners along Franklin Road that have signed a letter, dated May 25th,
objecting to those medians and requesting time of the Council this evening. This area is
comprised of both annexed and county zoned property. Some of the properties
intensely developed and some properties are currently undeveloped. I do have an
aerial with the -- with the property owners overlaid. I know there is at least a few that I
have seen so far this evening here, but I thought this would help to put them in context
when someone makes a point, that we can relate that back to the general vicinity.
imagine those that do speak will go through some of the reasons they are opposed to
those center medians. I do want to take just a minute, though, to run through some of
the reasons that we believe that the medians should be part of this road widening
project. The Ada County Highway District is going to install the ultimate complete street
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section, including the medians, with the project in 2012. If they are not installed with the
roadway project, staff is not aware of any practical mechanism to require the installation
of the center medians in the future with development and as I noted on the north side of
Franklin particularly, a majority of those properties are already annexed, so we don't
have that mechanism to require it through annexation and zoning or a development
agreement in the future. After the Ten Mile interchange opens, Franklin Road traffic
volumes are expected to -- to significantly increase and medians will be needed for
efficient traffic movement along that roadway. Long term access management
provisions for Franklin Road will be in place immediately and the city and ACHD will not
have to restrict access further in the future, so we won't have to go back to any
properties that redevelop out here or new businesses that come in and restrict their
accesses once they get used to those access points in the future. Installation would be
consistent with the city's plans and code. I mentioned the Ten Mile Specific Area Plan.
City code also limits the amount of driveways on arterial roadways, which Franklin Road
is. And left turn movements become more difficult and dangerous. I mentioned the --
the higher traffic volumes, obviously, when the Ten Mile interchange opens and those
left turning movements, particularly out of a site, are the ones that become the most
dangerous and medians would prohibit that in a lot of places, except for those that are --
they are intended. I mentioned having the collector network also being part of the plan.
This is then -- that roadway network and this particular area overlaid on the aerial so
you can see kind of that loop road and the circulation pattern that is envisioned for this
area. Of course, the red roads there aren't there today, there is nothing there. It is just
a plan. But at the same time we do have a plan in place for circulation in this area. I do
want to point out that some of the larger vehicles that use -- that are used to turning out
there today can be accommodated through some of the design -- through some design
elements in this project, making wider turning radii at u-turn locations. ACHD has, at
least in the plan that we most recently saw, added some additional width to the shoulder
near Ward Avenue, which is where the -- this is Joint School District bus barn here --
have added some area to that bike lane and stripe that out a little bit and has ~a little bit
of extra pavement, so realizing that those vehicles have a larger turning radius than
most, that can be accommodated through design. Staff believes that managing access
along Franklin Road by installing medians is in the long term in the best interest of the
city and we would recommend that they stay as part of the ACRD road widening project.
That's the presentation that I have and if there are any questions I'll try to answer them.
De Weerd: Thank you, Caleb. Council, any questions at this point?
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, if I might ask Caleb a question. You just talked about -- this
precedes my time on the Council, so my apologies for trying to get up to speed on this
in this location, but Ward Avenue you just mentioned about increasing the turning radius
for right turn coming off of Franklin or -- because there would not be a left turn at that
location; is that correct?
Hood: Madam Mayor, Councilman Hoaglun, I'm sorry, I should have specified that.
That would be west bound on Franklin, they are adding some extra pavement to that far
northernmost lane, so turning right into the site would have a little bit of extra pavement,
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so they don't swing so wide when they turn northbound onto Ward Avenue. But you're
correct, it would -- the left in and out of that on Ward is restricted by the proposed
median.
Hoaglun: Then, Caleb, if a bus or an SSC truck is coming down where they normally
turn left, there is no -- there is not enough turning radius at that intersection at Linder to
be able to make a u-turn like cars would be able to do. Does that mean they will have
to come down -- if they are coming from the west, either go up Pine or -- Pine would be
it. And, then, come down to make the right turn? Is that -- is that the plan? I mean
without a u-turn capability with those buses, we are throwing a lot of traffic somewhere
else.
Hood: Madam Mayor, Councilman Hoaglun, I can try to answer that. I don't -- first point
or question about not being enough turning radius in that section I haven't evaluated, so
what's there now isn't being touched with this current roadway widening project. But
don't know that it couldn't accommodate a u-turn today. I don't know that. And maybe
the -- maybe ACHD can answer that. I don't know how it was designed. The second
part of your point or question, you could go up to Pine, obviously. You could also make
a right out of the site and go through the new intersection that's being constructed right
now at Franklin and Ten Mile and that one will be a very wide intersection with dual lefts
and, again, u-turn accommodating there. I don't know if they have had a school bus in
mind. Again, that's something for ACRD when it gets down to -- I don't know what the
design turning radius is for a school bus or a fire truck, for that matter, or large vehicles.
A lot of the movements that I see, you know, obviously, this is kind of the far reaches
westerly of Meridian, so most of the vehicles are trying to get to or come from the east
to the west of this site. And certainly the interchange and overpass there will help a lot
of the traffic movements and flow -- if you're coming from north Meridian you could turn
earlier and come down Pine and come further south on Linder to turn right on Franklin,
you just have right movements. Yeah, it's a little bit different than what you potentially
do now, but -- but it's not unheard of and we don't think it's -- the trade offs for having to
go half a mile around the block versus safety and efficiency of the roadway network are
what we are trying to balance here.
Hoaglun: Okay. Thank you.
De Weerd: Any other questions from Council? Okay. All right. How many in the
audience are here for this item? Okay. This isn't listed as a public hearing, but we
would like to hear from you, if you will try and keep it so the comments are on point and
not redundant. We have a long agenda ahead of us. So -- please. If you will, please,
state your name and address for the record.
Miller: Madam Mayor, Brad Miller, Van Auker Properties, 3084 East Lanark in Meridian.
I appreciate the time that you have given us to discuss this situation here. You might
say it's a little bit late in the game for us to come forth with this, but we did -- at Van
Auker Properties did address the gentleman from HGR when he came to town and was
conducting all these charrettes and things and you might be interested to know I
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obtained a copy of the -- the stake holders analysis of what -- his evaluation and his
only comment in regard to Ronald W. Van Auker, developer, is under the comment
section it says: Cranky industrial developer. That might fit -- that might fit the bill, but
we don't want to be -- another reason I say that is because Ron's not here tonight. We
don't want to be cranky industrial developers, but it's interesting, I started receiving
telephone calls several weeks ago from property owners along Franklin Road saying
that the ACHD appraiser had come by and met with them to appraise their properties for
this road widening and had mentioned the medians. None of these property owners
had ever even heard of the plan for land -- or for a median island there along Franklin
Road. I told them that there had been a discussion that we had opposed it and they
wanted to get together. So, we got together and talked about that and drafted the letter
which you received. Every land owner, other than -- and David Turnbull and I are pretty
good friends and we talked about this briefly via a-mail and I can't say he's opposed, but
every land owner that I have met along Franklin Road is opposed to this median. It's
premature. Engineering warrants are not even close to being met there. The existing
tenants and property owners there will be damaged. We have -- Caleb, can you put up
that -- can I see that one right there on this thing?
Hood: Yeah.
Miller: Is it possible? Okay. Let me -- we own -- is that showing up? We own this
property right here, which is approximately -- it's a little bit less than 40 acres. Right
here in the corner we have got -- it's two acres that we bought later. We bought the
original property in 1979. We zoned it light industrial in the '80s and we bought this little
two acre parcel here. I have one tenant in there by the name of Northwest Auto
Transport, they drive the big auto transport trucks. I went over and talked to him about
the median here and he said it will -- it will create serious problems for him. I have
talked to the school district. They signed the letter. If you look at where the medians --
where.they say the median is going to be right along here, well, the school buses come
out here right now, so we are going to have a hundred school buses, some of which
probably go west now, but the majority of them go east and so we are going to have a
hundred school buses come here and make u-turns. We are going to have my auto
transport guy come here and make a u-turn. We are going to have all the trash trucks
come out and make u-turns. It doesn't make any sense. It just doesn't make any
sense. And you go back to our property here and our development opportunities are
taken away. We have no access to that property, other than right-in, right-out. So, the
property we have owned since 1979, if we want to go and develop that property now,
we don't have any access. So, I think the future access points were right in this area
and right in this area. So, in order for me to get access to a full signalized, full access to
a signalized intersection, I have to go across Walt Morrow's property. How am I going
to do that? Or I have got to go through Jerry Bowers' property or whatever this property
is here, the Franklin -Ten Mile, LLC, property, how am I going to do that? So, I have no
full access points to my property right there, which eliminates the industrial development
opportunities. So, you say we are going to -- we are going to widen the intersection and
we are going to allow for u-turns. Well, we bring in 53 foot tractor trailers -- we do
warehouse buildings. How are they going to get in there? How are they going to make
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u-turns at the intersection? It's an impossibility. At some point when these
interconnections are in, then, it makes sense to put the medians. Right now it makes no
sense. One of the arguments that I just despise -- I have been, as you know, at dozens
and dozens and dozens of these meetings, testified at dozens and dozens -- one of the
arguments I just despise is when property owners get up and say my property value is
going to be diminished. It's going to be hurt. Well, this is a case where that is true.
Most of the time it's not. This is a case where that is true. Who would buy our property
or who would want to build on our property if there is a right-in, right-turn -- right-in,
right-out only. It just doesn't make any sense. If you look at -- if you look at -- so, you
say, well, we won't have the opportunity to do it again. When you look at Overland
Road -- look at between Eagle Road and Meridian Road on Overland Road, I think that
functions fine. I think it functions great. You got the turn lanes out in the middle, you
have got two lanes going both directions, it makes sense. Why do we want to put the
median down the middle? Because it looks pretty, because we are going to have trees
there? To me, warehouse buildings where tenants occupy the building and employ
people and generate tax base, that's pretty to me. We can put trees on our property, we
can do all that, but let's allow commerce to take place along Franklin Road. Let's allow
trucks and vehicles to get in and out. Let's allow employees, let's allow school buses,
let's allow trash vehicles to get in and out. Let's not restrict them, because we want to
have a pretty parkway there. It just doesn't make any sense to me. I think that's about
it. I know there is some other people that want to speak, but I appreciate your
consideration on this and at some future point it might make sense to put those in, but
right now it just doesn't make a lick of sense and by looking at this one diagram here,
the approximate median locations, I mean you can see it just doesn't make any sense.
It's not warranted and I don't know why we are even considering it. Thank you very
much.
De Weerd: You know, Brad, I did not hear Caleb say one word about it being there
because it was going to be pretty.
Miller: I didn't understand. Didn't hear what?
De Weerd: I didn't hear Caleb mention anything about why those center medians
should be in there, because it should look pretty. That has nothing to do with this.
Miller: That's not accurate. Because we went through the same thing on Overland
Road with that whole Jim Jewett project and Iheard -- and Caleb did not say anything
about pretty, but in the past I have heard because it's going to be pretty. I have heard
that a lot.
De Weerd: Okay. He noted the things in the study and some of the justification and it's
not that I disagree with you on some of your other points, but, you know, what I would
like to dispel is those are not in there because we want pretty. We have a lot of
experience with these center lanes and the havoc it causes for our safety services. We
spend a lot of time and resources with accidents because of those center turn lanes.
So, I just wanted to dispel the pretty thing, is that is not the reason that those were
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placed in there in our plan. Now, one of my questions is earlier this year -- I think it's
just been a number of months, where we had people along Ten Mile in the south of
Franklin come in and ask for additional access points. We did ask that there be a study,
that we also approach the property owners on Franklin anticipating some of this need
for dialogue. Have we progressed anywhere on that study and moving forward to
where access points could be?
Hood: Madam Mayor, Council, yes, the -- ACHD, Gary Inselman, signed a letter dated
May 19th for the Brighton property that -- it says Steve Smith on this, but the Smith
Brighton property for HGR and there are some access points that -- I don't know if
ACHD's consented to, but they find that the work done by ACHD -- HGR does warrant
some access points related -- some of those were on Ten Mile, some of those were on
Franklin. The one I guess that is most pertinent per this discussion is there was alert-in
to the site from Franklin approved at 660 feet east of Ten Mile. So, that would be
somewhere -- this isn't to scale, but it would be somewhere in here they did allow a left
into the Brighton site. And, then, the full access, Madam Mayor, just to continue that,
you know, in general accordance with the plan at 1,180 feet east of Ten Mile. So, in this
general location, too. A left-in somewhere -- 660. I'm not exactly sure. But that was a
detailed analysis that HGR did and I don't know how many man hours they invested in
that, but it certainly was a comprehensive traffic analysis based on land uses that are
consistent with the Ten Mile plan and we worked with Brighton on coming up with some
of those assumptions that they used in traffic generation.
Miller: But with all due respect, it was all conceptual. There is no actual development
planned there. It's all conceptual, which is not reality.
De Weerd: So, did they consult any of the uses or even the owners to the north of
Franklin or were they just working with the Brighton piece?
Hood: Madam Mayor, it was -- HGR was under contract with Brighton. Now, this is
going to be just hearsay, but I do understand that Brighton did approach other property
owners in this area to go in and do a joint study and nobody, for whatever reason,
joined them in that. So, it was particularly for the southeast corner of that intersection in
the Brighton property.
Miller: That issue will be addressed by a subsequent speaker on the participation on
that traffic study.
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you, Brad. Any other questions for Brad?
Bird: I have none.
Rountree: None.
Miller: Thank you again for the time.
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Bird: Thank you, Brad.
De Weerd: If you will, please, state your name and address for the record.
Sedlacek: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, my name is Steve Sedlacek,
Sanitary Services Company, 2130 West Franklin in Meridian.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Sedlacek: Thank you for the time tonight. I guess I wanted to just say we are a
developed property, obviously. We serve the City of Meridian. We have about 10,000
truck trips a year coming out of our facility on Franklin. Don't erase it. I'm going to mark
it up, too. Caleb, could you put up that slide that shows the colored roadways, says A,
B, C, D and E on it? Yes. We are right here near letter B. My whole understanding
through this whole thing was that there would be -- we would gain a signalized access
by have -- by using the Meridian School District's road to the west of us and that would
become signalized. Now, maybe that's too close to Linder. So, I never commented on
the medians, thinking I was just going to pull out to the western edge of my property
and, then, hit Franklin and turn left. Well, it turns out that that's road D here and that
road D is actually on the western side of the Meridian School District, on the eastern
side of Walt Morrow's property. So, I don't have any access to it. So, now, I have no
access to turn left on Franklin. Eighty percent of my truck trips turn left. So, that's 8,000
trips a year. If I don't turn left, I'm going to right and there is no way I'm going to turn left
-- or pull a u-turn. at Ten Mile in a trash truck. And we also have 2,000 class A vehicles
a year, which are tractor trailer rigs with 48 foot trailers. And those are all heading north
to the landfill. So, they will have to go to Pine and, then, turn right and go down Pine, so
the -- as Councilman Hoaglun mentioned, they will be -- we will be diverting traffic to a
different location. It's going to be onto Pine or somewhat onto Cherry. That will occur
Monday through Thursday. The Friday routes that we run will be -- we turn right on
Friday. So, anyway, there is no impact on Fridays. What concerns me is -- you know, if
this dashed road were available to me -- and I think that's called -- I can't read the
legend there, Caleb. It's a potential possible roadway. That could get me to Linder. Is
that right?
Hood: Yes. That's correct.
Sedlacek: So, I'm not super confident that I'm going to get that. I don't know what it
takes to get that, but that would -- that would help. And my comment, I guess, would be
-- I don't mind doing Meridians. I understand -- or medians. I know they are for safety.
We need them on Eagle Road. I don't know that we need them on Franklin yet. I
understand if we do them now they are in and that's -- that can be good for safety, but
without the ancillary road to my north, I can't get out and it's just going to -- it's going to
cost -- you know, my trucks get really bad gas mileage and it's going to cost me tens of
thousands of dollars a year and it's going to increase my fuel consumption, air pollution,
all that kind of stuff. So, there were some -- if this were done to here where you have
the medians put in, plus the other ancillary roadways -- I'm not sure how to do that, but
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that would be a solution that would be great for us. To do one without the other puts me
in a bit of a box. So, I hope we could do them all together and not one at a time. And I
know there is a lot of other people to comment, so if you have any questions for me
will answer them or sit down.
De Weerd: I guess just a question for Pete or Caleb. When the bus barn and SSC
came in I believe I recall a conversation about having access there at some point for the
amount of vehicles and that would be coming and going. Do you recall was that
considered during this plan?
Friedman: Madam Mayor, I don't recall that during the Ten Mile planning process and
when SSC came in predates my involvement with this, so I couldn't give you any kind of
an answer on that. I can certainly check it out for you. But I don't have an answer
tonight.
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you. Any questions for Mr. Sedlacek? Thank you.
Sedlacek: Thank you.
De Weerd: Good evening. If you will, please, state your name and address for the
record.
Bartlett: Madam Mayor and Council, my name is Kelly Bartlett. I am the owner of KB
Fabrication and Welding. Owner and president. 1970 West Franklin Road. And I see
this at this time and came to comment as it's a very real situation for us. Like the trash
people who just spoke prior to us, we -- can I get that other map, please? And we are
positioned are right in this area right here and we have three properties that all use the
same access and road off of Franklin. We have Raco. We have KB Fabrication and
Welding. We have Graylock Cabinets here in the front of us. We have numerous
trucks daily that come in and out of there bringing us steel supplies and these are big,
big trucks. They are hauling thousands -- you know, an 80 -- probably to a hundred
thousand pounds of steel. There are 24 tires. They are pushing a hundred feet long in
length. It's always been our plan that when they got the Ten Mile interchange done that
most of these trucks do come from Salt Lake and they also come from Nampa and
when they get to Ten Mile interchange in now these trucks are having to go all the way
through town and, then, work their way onto Franklin to get over to where we are at.
So, we were excited to see the Ten Mile go in, which would allow these trucks to get off
here and, then, come down to Franklin to be able to access into our property here. If
we had these of medians put in right here, it would be different for this trucker to come
down here, being the size that they are, and find somewhere over in this area to do a u-
turn to get back on this median -- to get on the other side of the median so that they can
turn into our property and we have literally trucks daily coming and going with product,
as does Raco, as does Greylock Cabinets, they have semis and that come in with all
their wood and supplies and I and Raco -- we are both manufacturers of steel products
and they are mainly a manufacturer of grey type material and they build handlers and
they bring big cranes in to load this stuff onto their low boys in order to -- to transport it.
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So, our concern is how these trucks are going to get access into our place and not
cause disruption as it's been stated in traffic, but I just really see a real potential problem
given the situation where we are developed, we are a landlocked property, we do not
have access to Ward Street or Ward Avenue. That -- my understanding that is owned
by the trash people and the bus people, so we do not have access to that road. So,
pretty much this -- this in and out is all that we have to access our property to bring this
stuff in and out. So, I would ask that in doing this that we would be taken into
consideration. I understand the reason why you do it and I understand why, but I'm just
saying where we are already developed, we are here, I can see maybe future
depending on the growth -- you know, the benefits, possible, from it, but given our
situation it's really going to cause a real huge disruption of trying to tell people from out
of town who are not familiar with this area, hey, you got to come down this road and
now you have to turn -- do a u-turn, 180, to get back over to try to get on the right side
of the lane to get in and out of our property. Thank you for your time.
De Weerd: Thank you. You all are very efficient.
Roberts: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Dave Roberts, 744 East Kaibab Trail
Drive, Meridian. I am one of the owners of the 40 acre parcel on the northeast corner,
right here, of Franklin and Ten Mile, and speaking on behalf of my partners Mike
Schuler, Burke Jones, and John Ferguson as well. When the Ten Mile interchange
specific area plan was developed and approved in '87, you know, one of the comments
that I made to the city staff was that the city was acting as a developer, was determining
the market, was doing the land use planning and design and determining all the end
uses of all these properties in this area. My concern was unless one developer owned
all these properties, that there is really no way to make that happen and there is really
no way to insure that the roads are built where they are drawn on the plan and the real
mix of uses would be the ultimate uses. An example of this was when I testified on the
May 22nd City Council meeting and the gentlemen before me have so eloquently said,
Van Auker's property and every property east of my property to Linder are already
annexed in the city and they are already zoned industrial. In this -- in the north, the Ten
Mile Interchange Area Plan Van Auker's property is high density residential. All the
properties east of that are mixed employment. And I spoke at that time that the
likelihood of that happening is nil and, really, the Comprehensive Plan doesn't have a lot
of -- of weight, since they are already annexed in the city,, they are already zoned
industrial, there is not a lot of vary on those properties. Now, we fast forward almost
exactly three years later and Brighton Corp comes in with a -- on the southeast corner,.
they are right across the street on Franklin from me, just south right here, and they have
no development application before the city, but somehow they convince the city to write
a letter on their behalf to request specific access points that are changing the original
plan. I'm not sure how this occurs with the governmental planning process or the
Comprehensive Plan change process, but no doubt you guys had letters from the city
and from Gary Inselman that was just referred to with ACHD, regarding those accesses.
All this is based on Brighton's traffic engineer, doing a development plan for Brighton's
benefit. How does this affect my property? In 2007 -- Caleb pointed out the 660 foot
mark. As you look at my property we have Ten Mile coming across the corner, with a
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triangle piece that's potentially unusable. And we have a very small area to access on
Franklin. Originally in 2007 ACHD had approved a full access at that 660 foot mark.
They had also approved a full access at 660 down here and, then, they had a signalized
intersection at 1,330 feet that was either right on this border or -- or on Callen's
property. Now, what does the city recommend, that this shouldn't be a full access at
660, that it should be athree-quarter access, which is a left-in, right-in, right-out and the
graphic that was attached to the letter has no access to my property at all on the
northern side in the most logical place that access would be. Now, this was all done
without notification to us and I think everybody would agree that it significantly impacts
the value of my property. The other thing that's strange with the traffic engineer's plan
is my property is on the going home side and so now we have got all the property going
home, but it's okay to stack them up on the left-hand side and slow that traffic down to
get into Brighton's property on the south. The other property that was affected is to the
east of Brighton is the Calnon property. That was originally on their property, but
somehow with HGR's traffic plan it's better to have that one hundred percent on
Brighton property. So, that intersection has now magically moved to 1,180 feet, not at
1,330 feet, so it's one hundred percent on Brighton's property. So, it's damaged that as
well. Some of my frustration comes from my understanding of what a comprehensive
plan is and how it's used by the city in its long range planning. My understanding was
confirmed during the May 22nd, 2007, City Council meeting when staff presented this
plan. Part of the testimony that Anna Canning gave -- and I will quote -- I have a
package of the transcript if you'd like. But the quote from Anna -- and it was regarding
another intersection on Ten Mile, was: And, again, this is -- although it's more specific
than our current Comprehensive Plan, this is just a vision document. It's not set in
stone where these locations are and there is certainly opportunity for those agencies to
coordinate their needs and find out the appropriate location for that intersection.
Apparently that's not true, because the city is now requesting very specific access
points for very specific developers on their location without disregard to any of the
properties and also not only of the access points, but determining the traffic movements
as well by placing the median the length of Franklin Road prior to any of this land being
developed, the city is again not only on our property, but dictating all the accesses right
now before it's developed and even when some of this industry is already developed. I
left the City Council meeting in May of 2007 thinking that all these accesses would
ultimately be determined during the development process, during the approval process,
during the public hearing process, and everything else. Not like this. We are shocked
that this median is being placed and we are shocked that the city has -- has -- seems to
have favored one developer over somebody else to specifically change their access
points. Thank you and I will stand for questions.
De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
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Rountree: Mr. Roberts, we earlier heard about a study that -- and you mentioned that --
between -- or with HGR, Brighton, on their parcel to south of you. Were you
approached by them to work with future access that might benefit you as well?
Roberts: We were approached by them, but were -- right now that's a farm, we are not
ready to develop, and we really didn't think it would have value, because when we did
have -- did come up with a plan, we'd have to have another traffic study to -- to -- with
real development and real plans that were going to be built to determine the traffic and
we felt that a concept plan really wasn't -- wasn't accurate and wasn't needed.
Rountree: Thank you.
De Weerd: Any other questions? I will say that we haven't seen this study come back,
so this City Council and the city hasn't adopted anything. What we would like to see
and what we told Brighton then, which is probably why he contacted you, is we want to
see an access plan that addresses all the different properties, because I agree with
much of what has already been said, is we have an industrial use, we have a freight
corridor that is very valuable, and we are going to have to figure out how to move trucks
in and out of that area. With also the caveat is Ada County Highway District, their
responsibility is to move traffic and our responsibility is to -- to see that traffic moves
safely and efficiently, that it doesn't put people at risk. That's a lot of things to balance
as well to protect the property values. But it all has to work together. We would love to
see all the property owners' work together to figure out these access points. We have
an ordinance right now that says access should be at the -- the half mile on major
roadways, primarily on highways, but this is an alternative to I-84 when it's closed. We
will have a lot of traffic along here. So, we will need the property owners to work
together to figure out where these access points should be and how to give access to
those whose access it doesn't fall on. So, even though Brighton was the only one that
did it, they came in, they said we don't know what the land use will be, but we want to
address these access needs and we are willing to fund a study to do that. So, alls I can
say is, you know, they did what we asked them to, they asked other property owners if
they would like to participate or be a part of it and that is what we asked them to do.
Roberts: Again, Madam Mayor, I appreciate that and I just want to correct one thing.
You said that you haven't seen the study or have not seen Brighton's access request?
De Weerd: I haven't and I just asked Councilman Rountree, we -- have we -- has staff
brought it in front of us?
Hood: Madam Mayor, there was a presentation given by David Turnbull and Miguel
Legarreta from HGR, but they didn't hand you the study, they summarized it with a
PowerPoint presentation, but they didn't hand you the actual study itself, but they did
summarize that for you and that was three, four, five months ago, something like that
now.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
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De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I remember doing that, but we never give any approval or anything of it at that
time or, you know, said it was died in the wool and to send the letters in favor of it or
something.
Hood: Madam Mayor? If I may, Madam Mayor, to Council Bird's point, we requested
that ACHD do a detailed analysis of that traffic impact study that HGR did for Brighton.
That's, essentially, what the letter said was please look at this with a fine toothed comb
and you tell us if access is justified or not for this potential development. Along those
lines if land uses do change from what were evaluated on the traffic study, a
reevaluation of those access points, if that's what the justification is, is it's all based on
the land uses that are consistent with the Ten Mile plan and they need additional
access, because the land uses are so intense and consistent with the plan. So, if it
changes significantly, they do have to go back and look at their traffic analysis in more
depth to re-justify, if you will, those access points.
Roberts: And, Madam Mayor, I have included in there copies of the letters from the city
to ACHD and the ACRD response and Caleb described that well, is the city did, in fact,
request for ACHD to look at these and consider moving these access points on behalf
of Brighton where they requested and, in fact, on May 19th Gary Inselman responded
back and did, in fact, move those access points to the locations in the plan. So, that
has been done and is the process and Gary Inselman on the end -- it not only affects
the Franklin project here, it also affects the Ten Mile project that is currently under
construction and changing access points on that project that's currently in process and
he requests for the city to cooperate with him on changing those construction plans. On
the other item, doing a develop plan, again, that is great. For right now this -- this is
farm property and so the city is now going to compel us to go spend 40,000 dollars for a
traffic study for this that doesn't seem to be right or appropriate at all when it's farm
ground.
De Weerd: Again, you know, I can go back to my recollection and I must admit as I get
older it gets worse, but I don't think we approved. What we did do is we said that study
should go to the transportation agencies for their consideration, because I certainly
know that not one of us sits here and think we know anything about transportation and
we have to rely on our transportation agencies, as they do with us on the land use in
general and how it needs to work together, and that is one of the goals of the Ten Mile
Area Specific Plan is to marry up the land use and the transportation, so that you don't
have some of the challenges that we have out on Eagle Road and other parts of our
community with the conflicting motions with traffic and the land uses. I don't disagree
with you that there needs to be a look at that and that is also what we said that night is
we hope that this will take into consideration the other properties as well, not just this
one.
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Roberts: I hope so, too, and whether it was the intent or not, the results were pretty
powerful from that letter, so -- because they have now changed them, so --
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you.
Roberts: Thank you.
De Weerd: Additional comments?
Morrow: Walt Morrow. 2340 West Franklin Road here in Meridian. As one of the co-
founders of Linder Industrial Park in 1979, 1980, the concept of that industrial park was
to provide goods and services for the city with both access to rail. The five lane road
concept was developed in the early '80s and adopted as a policy in the late '80s, so we
could move goods and services around Meridian and to the west, east,. north and south
in an efficient manner. Part of the problem with medians -- medians were never
considered as part of that program. The center lane was considered to be for turning
movements. On occasion in winter-times a storage place for snow, an access bypass
for emergency vehicles. Could be used for a three and two situation if you had traffic
going in morning and evening directions, like have been used in other communities. But
in order to serve those functions it has to be an open -- an open lane. With respect to
alternate routes for Interstate 84, we have that alternate route during the evenings due
to construction on overpasses and those types of things recently and on a two lane
Franklin Road and it's worked well. Somewhat noisy, particularly late at night, but so be
it, that's the price. Part of my problem with this is -- and somebody on your staff has
subdivided my property with a highway through the back. Our access to rail has not
been discussed here this evening, but if somebody's going subdivide my property and
put a highway across the back, it precludes me from using a rail spur for a potential user
that I may have. That's part and parcel of what the design of the light industrial park
was to take advantage of that rail frontage, so that if spurs were needed they could be
placed on the properties. So, those things need to be taken into consideration also.
With respect to -- to the center medians, the problem with those is -- is that if they are
full medians, such as in some of the areas around St. Luke's, it takes away stacking
distance for the turning movements and one of the problems at St. Luke's now is at high
peak usage times of the day, if they're there, there is not enough stacking room for the
turning movements, because we have these beautiful Bomanite medians that
somebody forced to be built along that road, not taking into consideration getting folks in
and out of the various businesses and in that case St. Luke's. Those same kinds of
problems can exist in any of the development where you're putting in medians that don't
really serve a function, other than trying to direct traffic, but not giving stuff stacking
room for major turning areas. It seems to me that we are talking about the concept that
was talked about in terms of u-turns. A lot of what happens in terms of truck traffic in
these types of areas is they are not 53 foot trailers, but they are doubles with short
boxes or triples, those people can't make u-turns at the end of a -- of a median. So, it
seems to me that what needs to happen is -- is that this needs to be rethought in terms
of what the real uses and how things actually work, as opposed to what a study says on
paper may work and it seems that we ought to be taking the input of the owners who
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are going to be developers of those properties and are simply waiting for the right time,
the right economy, and as we all know, those things have been tough. But at some
point in the future these things will all develop out and they will develop out quickly and
as Steve has talked about, there is SSC, the school district, the rest of those properties
could end up with the same type of vehicular uses as the ones that exist now and that's
a lot of loading to try to restrict with medians at this point. Any questions?
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: How come you didn't try to use the technology?
Bird: Yeah.
Morrow: The technology here? No, Mr. Rountree, I'm not allowed to touch computer
stuff.
Rountree: I was just waiting for that, Walter.
Morrow: What, me using the technology?
Bird: I thought you'd do a diagram for us.
Morrow: That won't happen any time soon.
De Weerd: You know, I will note, Walt, the medians that you referred to on Eagle Road
-- are traffic safety commission would be the first to say those are the best things that
ever happened, because we have not had an accident and -- a serious property
accident since those went in. So, I know that there are multiple things that a roadway
needs to accommodate, but the safety aspects of those ugly things -- and I think they
are ugly. I don't want trees there either to make them pretty, Brad. But I -- they have
increased the public safety aspect a hundred fold.
Morrow: Madam Mayor, you can accomplish the same thing without full lane width
median. You can accomplish that as they have done on Eagle Road with a 12 inch
wide barrier to jump across or in some cases there is a two foot wide barrier. But it still
leaves the lane usable.
De Weerd: Oh, yeah, I agree with you on that.
Morrow: And the stuff that Bomanite makes the lane not usable and my suspicion is
that it won't be a very long period of time before we will see front end loaders and those
kinds of things in there taking those out, so that we can stack vehicles and my point
would be is that we can do a much better job with medians accomplishing what we want
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and still utilize the center and we put the medians in once we have the development in
terms of the property. So, that's as I see it.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Morrow: You're welcome. Anything further? Thanks.
Bowers: I am Dorothy Bowers. 2740 West Franklin. I have lived there 62 years. I
have seen many, many changes. It used to be Highway 30 before they put the
interstate in. But, anyway, we moved our business out there, because Meridian wanted
to expand. They wanted to go everywhere. And we love it. We love to have our
business out there. But don't push the median on us when we can only go towards
Nampa. Thank you.
De Weerd: Any further comment? Okay. Council?
Rountree: Madam Mayor, not to make excuses and not to make a long story, but I will.
Not the excuses. But we are kind of caught in a situation that's most unusual for a city.
That's when a road comes before development happens. This is the second time we
have faced this in a number of months, but the first time that I can remember in 20 plus
years that it's ever happened. On the occasion we addressed it earlier, the same thing.
Facility. Brand new. Essentially no development through part of it. And a median
concept in the Ten Mile Interchange Area Specific Plan. Keep in mind that plan is
visionary. It is not cast in concrete. It's goes beyond five years, it goes beyond ten
years, it goes beyond 20 years in term of what could be out there, what might be
desirable to be out there. In this specific area that's encompassed by that plan there
are entitlements and, Brad, you identified those. Even those areas are identified in that
plan as high density residential, they, in fact, have an industrial entitlement. So, we are
caught in what's there now, what may been there now conceptually, and how to plan for
a new road when it's ag land. The plan calls for the medians. The plan calls for the
medians for several reasons, but from our perspective we don't want another Eagle
Road. We spent way too much taxpayer's money trying to pull out a vehicle, putting out
fires, and trying to save lives. I believe you're right, we have a situation where it's most
unusual for us where we have a road before we have development. In the previous
situation where we addressed this, we went the direction of -- we can envision that in
the future, as the plan works it itself -- and as Mr. Roberts indicated, the development
occurs and basically drives the land uses with consistency with the plan of what comes,
that in the future a median may very well be necessary, but let's plan for it now. We
would like it now, because we really don't want to have to pay for it in the future. If we
don't have it now, then, we do accommodate those folks that have activities,
businesses, needs in the area and for a long time. We have to remember, again, that
that plan was developed in a time that we had not faced ever in terms of growth --
double digit growth. We are now in a time that we have not experienced before either in
a recession, near depression situation, and, essentially, no growth and we are all having
to rethink what's going to happen in Meridian, because things have really slowed down
and I think you all in the development field understand that things are going to be slow
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for quite awhile. So, I appreciate you coming forward, because the time is right for this
to be rethought. My thinking is that we do accommodate for medians. At some point in
time -- and probably not in my lifetime -- it's going to be necessary, but it's better that it's
accommodated now and not having to take out things that might be developed there in
the future, as opposed to putting in something too narrow that won't accommodate
something in the future. What we did on Overland was just that. Let's build the typical
section in such a way that in the future when we approach an Eagle Road situation in
terms of cost and property damages, accidents, deaths, we can put in those safety
features and, hopefully, with the help of ACRD or, hopefully, by ACHD. I hope there is
nobody from ACHD here --
Bird: There is.
Rountree: Oh, way in the back. Well, I might offend you, but I don't mean to. They are
struggling, too, with the ability to accommodate needs and -- and we really appreciate
that they are coming to Meridian and building roads before we have development, don't
get me wrong, but it makes it difficult. It makes it very difficult to plan fora 20 year
window conceptually and that gets to the point that was raised about Brighton. They
brought a conceptual plan to ACHD about access at such point in time as they develop
that property, depending on what the market's driving them to, that concept plan may be
very different. They may be on the hook to have to change those access points. But at
least they are going to get them in for the concepts that they have right now. But my
position, Madam Mayor, is that we -- we do something similar to what we did on
Overland and work with ACHD in such a way that we can accommodate future u-turn
movements at various locations, that we can accommodate signalized intersections and
that we can accommodate a raised median and not necessarily a planted median, but a
raised median for safety purposes in the future. Do that now and hope that we get --
and somebody said -- who was it? Walter. Development -- develop out quickly. I hope
that's true. We will talk about that later. Anyway, that's where I'm coming from.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I agree with what Charlie says. I feel that we need to be able to access these
properties from going east, as well as going west. This is industrial. They are already
there. We have got jobs there, which we are thankful for. Have the road wide enough
that later days, beyond my time, if they need -- if it gets to the point they need a median,
then, they can do a median, as they build out they know where they need signalized
cross-access and stuff like that. Right now let's just make sure we get a wide enough
road to accommodate all that and make sure these properties can still be accessed on
the north from going east or west.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
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Zaremba: I think there were some very fine points raised this evening. When I first
heard that we were going to have this discussion, I actually was a little surprised,
because I -- I thought that all the property owners had participated in the Ten Mile area
plan. So, understand that may not have been the case or that you felt that the situation
was being handled. I'm in favor of medians a lot of places. I think there are places
where they make a great deal of sense. Certainly Eagle Road is a good example. I
have been involved in the steering committee that will try and change the access plan
along Fairview where we are also having a lot of accidents and try that, but I do
understand that this area is unique. If you look at much of Fairview, Cherry Lane
through Meridian, what is along that roadway is retail and restaurants and stuff. Same
thing with Eagle Road. Hospital, but mostly retail and restaurants. That's a different
kind of traffic than industrial and we have precious little industrial area in Meridian to
begin with. We are trying to have a balance of everything in Meridian and we don't have
a lot of industrial. Having the railroad there makes this a perfect place to be industrial
and between a major arterial, Franklin and the railroad, and -- and I do think we need to
reconsider in this location whether the medians -- particularly raised medians are
appropriate or how many gaps there need to be in them or something if they are going
to be there at all. When the Ten Mile interchange is open there is going to be a lot
more traffic on Franklin Road and, actually, a lot more of it will be the industrial traffic.
That's going to be a big convenience and in order for that to work I think the left turns
need to be available. Otherwise, that interchange doesn't really benefit that industrial
area and I'd just -- as I say, while I'm very much in favor of medians and the safety that
they provide, certainly of retail areas I can see this as being an excellent place for an
exception. Certainly until it's developed out and we may decide at sometime maybe we
do have to do medians, but my thinking at the moment would be let's prepare for them,
but not put them in.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, just a quick comment. You know, this is the fun part of public
service where, you know, when growth happens and we are playing catch up and
people are going, well, why didn't they plan for this. How come this isn't happening?
It's a mess. And, then, now when things slow down and we are planning ahead and
people are going, well, why are you doing that, what do we need that for. You're
wasting resource in building that. But this is a situation where we are trying to look
ahead and plan for -- for the traffic that will be there. And, Mayor, you said something I
think was -- was absolutely correct and that is the property owners out there now need
to be talking amongst yourself and giving us some good ideas on how we can plan for
that area and where those intersections might be. And I know there are ideas that you
have for your property, maybe not full-blown concepts, but if there is a way we can get
folks working together and give us a better idea, so when that time comes that we do
have to do something, things are lined up properly and we aren't having to shuffle things
around at more expense and we can accommodate the growth that will happen out
there and it will happen, it's just a matter of when and not if. But I think, Mayor, when
you talked about having property owners do that, I think that's great, because that's --
that's what we need, we need your input on that, not just, no, we are just going to do our
thing, which I -- looking at the group that talked to us, I don't -- I don't get that feeling at
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all. You folks have been developing and doing property development in Meridian for a
long time and want to see the best thing for this community, as we do. So, that's the
good side of it. The good ideas that you guys have to make that happen, love to hear it,
and see what we can do down the road and see what we can do in the meantime as
this -- as this traffic increases, but what do we need to do versus what can we put off
and do later and take a look at.
De Weerd: Yes.
Morrow: Madam Mayor, if I might. Walt Morrow. If I might suggest, you know, in this
process one thing that's become clear is -- is that none of us as property owners -- and
in one meeting we had there were 13 of us there -- we had been notified by the city that
-- of a certain event and the fact was is not one of the 13 had ever received any
notification. A large part of what we are talking about could be done out of the Council's
time and out of the Council chambers, if we, as property owners, were included in the
process. Many of these things were surprises to us, the over -- and we are zoned light
industrial, but to find out part of the Van Auker property was for a high density and other
types of uses and none of us even knew that that existed at the time and that the city
had done that. In some cases in terms of the Ten Mile interchange, I was told by Anna
that I wasn't invited to have input into that, because I was at the half mile section line
away from the intersection, so, therefore, they didn't give any us of notification that were
that way. So, it would seem to me that a whole lot of this could be prevented if the city
and its staff were incorporating the property owners in committee meetings and -- such
as Hoaglun indicated and these things could be worked out for the most part long
before it got to the City Council under these circumstances. So, that's my comment and
my observation as to what's gone on and why we are here tonight. Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you. Well, I guess, Caleb, what do you need from the Council
tonight?
Hood: Madam Mayor, I don't necessarily need anything, but based on the discussion
that you just had, I think it would probably be appropriate to send a letter over to ACRD
requesting that they remove the medians. This project is designed and they are in the
right-of-way phase now, but I could draft a letter for your signature or the Council's
signature, you know, essentially, asking them to delay the construction, but to
accommodate potentially future -- future installation of these medians and ask them
maybe to evaluate it as a -- you know, a time to time basis after this area develops or
something like that I can work up a letter, but I think that would be appropriate to send
over to ACHD to ask them. But that ball is pretty much in their court. I mean it's really
their call. They have it designed. Like I said, they are in the right of way phase with
construction in 2012. So, we would be at their -- I won't say mercy, but we are at their
discretion to -- to pull those from the plan now, because it is in the design plan. But
that's what I would recommend.
De Weerd: Craig, did you have any comments on what you need from us at this point?
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Herndon: Craig Herndon, project manager with the Ada County Highway District.
Mayor, Council, thanks for your comments this evening. In regards to the project and
the status that we are at, it would be -- and I'm taking a stab at this of trying to represent
them, but it would be a preference not to delay the project. During the right of way
process there are changes that will need to occur and some updates to those plans that
will have to occur. Removing the medians from the project is not necessarily a large
issue in getting those out. There is cost to it, but taking those out could be done without
delaying the project.
De Weerd: Craig, I think the suggestion was more delaying the installation of the
medians than delaying the project.
Herndon: Madam Mayor, unfortunately, the way I had taken it or thought I had heard
the comment was to delay the project, so I apologize. In regard to how those medians
would go in or could go in in the future, that's definitely something we would have to
look at and discuss with the city in regard to how those would get funded and how -- you
know, what process to get those put in eventually. The width that we have out there for
a center turn lane, according to the plan, is 12 feet. The medians that were planned in
there were going to be nine foot wide. So, we have the width out there for the lane part
of the plan, it's just how those medians would get installed at some point in the future.
De Weerd: So, in the interim it could be a center turn lane?
Herndon: Madam Mayor, when -- the interesting part of it was is when the original plans
were designed it had no medians in it and, then, we had the request to put the medians
into it. So, the medians were added. So, taking the medians back out would not
necessarily change the road cross-section as it is.
De Weerd: Okay. Good. Thank you so much for your clarification and, you know, I
would like to find out from your perspective, Craig, on how best to move forward in
incorporating access points and circulation in this area, particularly, I guess in that
whole corridor from Linder to Black Cat, because of the increased traffic. If our staff can
work with you and as well as the property owners in looking at a more comprehensive
access points plan, that -- that would be ideal. So, when those medians did go in you
can answer some of the key points of how do you get these large semis and buses,
garbage trucks in and out of those areas and connect them without restricting their
access?
Herndon: Madam Mayor, I guess a way to answer that would be to -- that is definitely
something that can be looked at. As we go through -- originally the medians would
have restricted those movements, but if Council's choice is not have those put in right
now, then, that's a deviation from, you know, your adopted Ten Mile Specific Area Plan
and my only concern in doing that is that at some point when those medians have to go
in, as the Council has stated a plan for them and get them in, the issue is not
necessarily at that point with the property owners, it's with their tenants that have put
their offices or businesses on those properties that when the medians suddenly are
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placed out into the road, then, those are the ones that are coming through and, you
know, are not happy with that type of restriction. So, it's one of those that if we make
sure that -- or, you know, find some ways through discussion between staff that, you
know, people realize that these medians will eventually go in, so that we don't get that
back lash to ACRD or to the city, I mean that's -- that's one of the concerns that I have
is to make sure that we -- we do that.
De Weerd: In a timely fashion.
Hood: Madam Mayor, if I could maybe just chime in on that. We have -- I have had
discussions with ACRD traffic on that and being proactive in looking at access points,
rather than reacting to develop as it comes in. I don't know that we are going to be able
to do that on an area wide scale. We can certainly look at it and have best case
scenarios. There are a lot of assumptions that go into that, though. I mean we are
assuming certain land uses at certain densities and intensities. If there is changes in
that, then, the justification for some of those access points change. We also looked at
hiring a consultant to -- just to ballpark a figure for us and it was somewhere around a
hundred thousand dollars. I think it was around a hundred thousand dollars for
somebody to do that analysis, use the land uses that were identified in the Ten Mile
area and come up with a specific area plan and we thought wasn't a very good use of
funds for the city to fund a plan to do that. But we can work with ACHD staff and look at
it. It's going to be more of a guide, though, than saying this is where an access point --
ACHD does have a policy as well for access points, so we certainly can still work
amongst our staff, I just wanted to say those wheels are turning, we just don't know the
best way to really approach that to be proactive in this whole area as these property
develop, but we are working on it.
De Weerd: After that discussion you can come back with a recommendation that would
be appreciated. Options. Thank you, Craig.
Herndon: Thank you. Council, thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you all for being here this evening and if we could -- if we don't have
your contact information on that letter -- I don't remember if that letter gave addresses.
If you could collect those and get those to our staff, so we can keep you involved in this
process. Thank you.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor, for the record, Brad Miller from the audience said he would
take care of that. I don't know if it was heard.
B. Parks and Recreation Department: Strategic Planning Focus
De Weerd: Thank you. Item 6-B is our Parks and Recreation Department, the strategic
planning focus, and the primary reason for this workshop tonight.
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Hoaglun: And, Madam Mayor, as Steve's coming up and they are getting everything
ready to go on that, just for the baseball fans out there, tonight was Steven Strasburg's
debut for the Washington Nationals against the Pittsburgh Pirates, through seven
innings, Washington is ahead four two. Strasburg has struck out 13. Pretty good.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Hoaglun: My son text me.
De Weerd: I know. I'm going what are you doing over there.
Zaremba: I didn't see a radio earphone or -- you're getting signals.
Hoaglun: How is that for an intro, Steve? We are talking about recreation.
Siddoway: As long as it's on recreation. That's a nice transition. Madam Mayor,
Members of the Council, I'm pleased to be here tonight and it's, actually, quite an honor
to be able to bring my -- some of my staff forward and recognize them publicly with you
and with members of the audience that are here tonight. To talk a little bit about some
of the many things that we do to add value to this community, which we all care about.
The focus of tonight is the strategic focus of our department. Our mission in life as a
department, as stated in our mission statement, is to enhance the community's quality
of life for the citizens of Meridian by providing well designed and property maintained
parks and recreational opportunities for all citizens. We fit into the overall mission and
vision of the city in a variety of ways and I don't need to read the whole thing to you, but
I have highlighted some sections within the City of Meridian overall mission that I think
apply directly to us as a department. This is our current park system map and that map
has been growing over the last several years. We have an expanding park system.
The geographic distribution of our parks is improving and we have those varieties of
park types available to the citizens of the community. Our largest and most well known
currently is the Meridian Setters Park, our one park that's deemed regional. We have
four parks that are deemed community parks at Heroes, Tully, Storey and Bear Creek.
And, then, others that are smaller in size for neighborhood parks, mini parks, as well as
a future parks. We currently have 189 acres of developed park land, 143 of that is in
the regional and community parks by and far our largest category of parks. There are
44 acres in neighborhood parks, a quarter of an acre orthree-quarters of an acre in mini
parks and one and a half in special use areas. We have over 15 acres of other
landscape maintenance that we take care of as a city and about 48,000 lineal feet of
pathway that we maintain. And I will get into more of the details on that a little later.
Our current level of service, which is a statistic that gets a lot of attention and for good
reason with the Commission or the Council and always wondering where we are at, we
are currently at two and a half acres per thousand of the developed park land. Now, we
have 179 acres out there that we own of undeveloped park land and that sits in -- we
are counting in that Kleiner Park, even though we technically don't currently own it, but
we know it's coming, so we count that in there. We have the 77 acres down south, 30
acres of the Borup property, and, then, a small neighborhood park that's still future --
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William Watson. Thank you. But if all of that park land were developed today at that --
at our current population, we would have 4.9 acres per thousand. If we met population
projections of a hundred thousand in approximately ten years at 2020 and everything
were developed out, we would still be at 3.7 acres per thousand. There is some interest
in knowing, you know, how much we currently own if it were developed, factored into
our level of service. If -- if the CIP has -- that will be presented to you later tonight, so
I'm not going to dwell on it in detail right now, were developed which is not, for example,
developed out the 77 acres, we -- and we still grew in population to a hundred
thousand, we would be at 2.9 acres per thousand. This graph shows you the trend
since the 1980s on -- on park land that's developed within the City of Meridian. See it
starting out there at about 20 acres in the '80s and, then, in the mid '90s it starts to
increase and, then, in the last decade has -- has grown from about 40 acres to the 189
that we have today. This is an older view of our staff and I'd like to -- actually, if Rachel
would stand up for just a second. I want to recognize Rachel. Rachel does a lot for our
department behind the scenes and not just doing things like helping put together
presentations like this, but the grand openings that you have been to, the newsletters
that you have seen and, then, I'm sure you know Janice Smith, who sits at our front
counter and is the public face, if you will, for our department. As our administrative
staff, we do a fantastic job and I want to acknowledge her efforts on our behalf. We
have in the parks division nine and a half year around, full-time employees. The half is
a part-time employee that's with us year around. Twelve seasonal maintenance
workers. Six splash pad attendants. On the recreation staff we have a small year
around staff of three, with 18 coming on as seasonal recreation leaders for summer
camps and related items in the summer and other times throughout the year, nine score
keepers and an office assistant that's seasonal in the summer. The two administrative
assistants are Rachel and Janice, as I mentioned, as well as myself. So, total we have
got only 15 and a half year around employees, pretty bare bones, I think, for what we
do. At our peak season we have quite a large number if you count all of our seasonals
and everything, 61 and a half employees and that doesn't include the 20 independent
contractors that we contract with for teaching the classes. You have seen this slide a
number of times, so I don't need to dwell on it, but the intent of tonight is to show you
how we fit into the cogs that are the strategic plan of the city, being strategic growth,
economic excellence, services meeting demand, stewardship of the public trust, and
organizational excellence. And we will try and show you some of the ways that we have
helped accomplish that mission of the city. Under key to growth, economic excellence,
we are working very hard to provide a quality park system and amenities, diversity in
type and location in order to meet public recreational needs and provide a catalyst to
economic development. Julius M. Kleiner Park is a great example of one that's coming
that we are working very hard on that will not only be a great addition to the city for its
recreational value, but will also be great in terms of its catalyst attributes as toward
economic development. Mike Peter was here earlier. I don't think he's still here. But
wanted to recognize him as one of the trustees of the park trust. The Centennial Park
improvements are something that we are working on right next to the community center
downtown. You're familiar with the community development block grant process and we
have got improvements that are going in in the next couple of weeks there and including
some unique play features that aren't found in any of our other parks and I have a
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June 8, 2010
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picture of it on our coming up slide. On Settlers Village Square phase two, we are
working on the partnership that was presented to you a month or so ago to try and
investigate tennis feasibility as an indoor option. The south Meridian regional park,
which we are very grateful that we were able to acquire that land last year, a fantastic
bargain, and will certainly help us to meet our level of service goals. We are also
working, as an example, on community center ADA upgrades, through one of the grants
that has been allocated. I want to spend just a moment and give you an update of
Julius M. Kleiner Park, but before I do, you know, there is -- I want to take just a
moment and, Elroy, would you stand up for just a second? Elroy -- most of you know
Elroy. Elroy is our park superintendent and there is probably any number of slides that I
can plug Elroy into in terms of acknowledging him, because he wears many, many hats.
But Elroy has been working hard, staying up late -- sit down. Thanks. He has done so
much towards Julius M. Kleiner Memorial Park project in recent months trying to get the
specifications out for all the decisions that have to be made for what gets built in the --
in working with the -- the consultant team and now with the design team, that I just
wanted to thank Elroy for his many efforts, but particularly in relation to Kleiner Park and
I also acknowledge that he doesn't do alone, there are many -many, many that help
behind the scenes. Since we last gave a specific update to Council on Kleiner Park
back in January or February, several things will have been accomplished. We
accomplished the DA modification, which you're aware, and that was to City Council.
We finished the annexation of the property. The CZC has been into the planning
department and approved. I wanted to let you know the artist selection for the park has
been made with help and input from the arts commission and Amber Conger, who did
the sculpture out in front of City Hall, has actually been selected to work on the three
obelisk structures that are kind of landmark art pieces within the park and Thomas J.
Warren, who is a nationally renowned sculpture out of Rogue River Oregon, has been
selected as the sculpture to work on the sculpture of Julius M. Kleiner and his work is
phenomenal. In the director's report in the commission -- parks commission agendas
we send out, that report actually has a link to their website noted and if you ever have a
chance to get on and look at some of his work, it's truly remarkable. The construction
team selection has been going on in the last month and we now have that team
selected, with prime contractors on board for all of the various disciplines within the park
and because of the nature of this not being a publicly funded project, we are actually
able to do a unique structure where they are now functioning as part of the design team
prior to the design being at a hundred percent to bring in value engineering ideas and
get that -- those projects to the finish line. We have been involved, as you know, with
the ACHD hearings on this matter and, fingers crossed, I believe that we should receive
final approval of those at our meeting tomorrow. We have heard back from the Center
Cal attorneys yesterday that they approved the proposed language and clarifications
from ACHD staff and that seems to be on track. The Senior Center, we are actively
working on an agreement for -- the maintenance analysis is something that we brought
forward to you in January. I would like to take just a second, though, and acknowledge
Rita Cunningham from the finance department. Is Stacy here? There is Stacy in the
back. So -- and Mike work directly with --
De Weerd: Mike, you can stand up, too, now.
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Siddoway: Yeah. I had another one for him to stand up, but he can stand up twice. So,
Mike -- this winter we -- there was a lot of work done on analysis of all of our parks and
maintenance and hours and costs and the Kleiner Park enhancement that you will be
receiving with the budget process is -- is based on a very detailed analysis that was
done with the finance department's help. We do have the ground breaking schedule. I
think everyone should have received a couple of a-mails on this already. I understand
that July 6 is the date that we will be presenting budget presentations, that we will be
taking a break between 1:00 and 3:00, as I understand, and inviting you out to the site
and Eugene Kleiner and his son Mike Kleiner plan to be here and invite you to join us in
the ground breaking for that park. Moving onto other items. Colin, if you would stand
up for just a second. Colin, as you know, is the -- the energy and the vision behind the
special events that we put on and, again, we acknowledge the fact that he doesn't do it
alone, there is lots of help from park maintenance staff and others, but Colin owns this
and he owns it well and makes things happen. Thanks, Colin. Moving night in Meridian
started last week and continues through the summer every Friday night in June, July
and August. We have got a great lineup of movies and we hope some night when it's --
the weather is good and raining a little less than it was last Friday night, that you might
come out and stop by and join us at the park. It's truly a remarkable experience and
think I reported back to you last fall that at the NRPA conference in Salt Lake City last
fall they were showing a movie night on the screen and as I walked in to see what they
were talking -- doing, they were handing out flyers and I sat down and I looked at the
flyer and it was a picture of Meridian and they were using us as an example of a
successful program for others to follow nationwide and I thought that was pretty
remarkable. We do other events. The Barn Sour run is later this month. The Fourth of
July celebration in conjunction with Meridian Speedway and I'll acknowledge
Councilman Bird for his help in getting items put together in that agreement to move us
forward there. Christmas in Meridian and the tree lighting. We are actually going to add
a new event this year. We are looking at possibly doing acelebration -- a play with an
organization called Kaboom in September and we look forward to expanding our -- our
special events for the city. We also support city beautification efforts to maintenance of
right-of-way landscaping, the projects like we were talked about earlier. But public art
projects, such as the -- the art that's going into the Ten Mile interchange. This is a
photograph here. One of our big goals, if you will, is to develop an interconnected
pathway system. We recently completed a pathways master plan update and that was
brought forward to Council through the planning department. We coordinate those
pathways with planning department for both CDBG projects and development process.
The 8th Street pathway phase two, we had bid openings on that -- was it last week,
Elroy? Or, no, it was apre-bid meeting. Pre-app. So, that one is out to bid. The pre-
bid this week and those bids are coming in soon. Both the -- the extension of the Bud
Porter Pathway, which was the first priority on the commission's priority list, and the
Fothergil pathway extension, which ties into it, are also both under contract and starting
their work. This is our pathways network map and I don't think I need to spend a lot of
time there. But this is where I wanted to give you an update on the pathways. Actually,
sent Mike out and he and Roger, I think, wheeled off all of the pathways that we could
find. And I was astounded, quite frankly, at the -- at some of the numbers. We currently
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June 8, 2010
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have in our system about approximately 48,000 lineal feet of pathway. About 24,000 or
half of that is in our parks directly and the other half of that is other pathways, like the
Bud Porter, that we maintain. Everyone thinks of the Bud Porter first, because it's the
most well known, and that's a mile of it, but there is another three and a half miles out
there that we currently maintain and are in charge of. Now, we also tried to do our best
measuring of other pathways that are out there that aren't yet connected into the system
and there is more of those, another 64,000 lineal feet, for a total of 112,000, but that's --
if those numbers are right, that's 21 miles of pathways out there today and, you know,
those are based on real measurements and we do need to ground truth this with some
GIS, so I don't want you to get too married to these exact numbers, but this gives you
an idea, you know, it's more than a mile of pathway that's out there. There is a very
disconnected but growing system that's out there for us to build off of. Allison, if you
would, please, stand. Allison is in charge of our activities, the activity guides that come
out three times a year, all the classes that are in them, all the coordination of all those
contractors that run those classes and holding events that are in the community center.
She also coordinates the Teen Activities Council and you see growth and just improved
classes and good feedback from the people that take those classes and, thank you,
Allison, for the things you do to make that run. You know, if Allison is ever sick or, you
know, something happens, you know, there is no -- there is no backup, so she's not
allowed to get sick.
Kaptein: Or have kids.
Siddoway: Or have kids. Not in the program.
De Weerd: After all of that do you want them?
Siddoway: After summer camp she may be deterred. But the community center gets a
lot of use and that's one of the things I wanted to report to you tonight. We have invited
other organizations in, like the AARP Tax Aid. The census did in their training there this
spring. We this year held for the first time winter break and spring break camps during
those weeks that the kids were out of school. It's used four to five nights a week, with
up to three classes per night, plus daytime classes that are available for toddlers and
moms and things. In those activity guides and in the classes that are held there are
several old favorites that continue on from guide to guide, such as art classes and
dance classes. We also have several new programs this year, such as children's
theater, yoga classes, zumba fitness, and preschool sports, chess and others. The
Teen Activities Council is the -- what we did to replace the after school program at
Meridian Middle School and we talked about this last year at our strategic focus and we
made the decision, then, to change our focus from the after school program to an after
-- an evening monthly activity for teens. We have had over 200 participants in those
programs this year. I think it's been a success and we were able to reach more kids
through this than we did through the after school program and at less of a cost. It is a
subcommittee of the Mayor's Youth Advisory Council and you have actually heard
monthly updates from them on a lot of those activities and I think they are excited to be
apart of it and we are grateful to have them to help us plan and carry them on. This
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shows you some of the numbers and the growth that we have seen in the activity guide
enrollments through May 26th of this year, so we just 2010 looked small, but it's
because we are just entering into our busy time. But we have seen growth in those
programs over the last five years and continue to do so. Another thing that we do is
monitor and update the CIP. Our goal has been and continues to be to get to that level
of service of four acres per thousand and if we base that on future population of a
hundred thousand, we need 400 acres and so that's our goal. We won't get there with
the current CIP, so -- but we started with a plan that got us there, found that we couldn't
afford it, and, then, we scaled back. So, we will talk more about that later, but we know
that we are working towards that goal and we are making headway. We worked hard to
market the city's parks and recreation services out to the community and tell our story,
let people know what we do. I have a traveling PowerPoint that we take out frequently
to organizations across the community when invited and we hear a lot that, well, I'm
really glad that you made this presentation, it's -- you do so much more than I realized,
you know, and you hear that a lot. We also work a lot on -- on new stories and with the
Mayor city's news through the Mayor's office in providing stories to go into that on a
quarterly basis, as well as our annual newsletter and, then, a copy of our brochure has
been provided each of you tonight and we use that at all the events we go to to help get
information out to the public. We have been very successful in the past year in
attracting and being awarded grant projects. We have in the CDBG program currently
upgrades to the community center for the ADA, the Centennial Park improvements, the
Five Mile Creek path design, and the 8th Street pathway, all of which are currently
underway. Through the energy efficiency conservation block grant we have funds for
the Fothergil pathway connection, which is also underway and, then, the Bridgetower
pathway design, which we hope to begin this fall. One of the items that I wanted to
bring the Council tonight is we have an existing position that was our recollection site
supervisor Craig Farrall held that position, as you may remember. With the change in
the -- from the after school program to the Teen Activities Council and other changes
and knowing the high load that we currently have for -- for projects I would like to take
that existing position and reclassify it into a project manager type position. This will not
be a new position, not a new staff person, but a change to an existing position that is
currently vacant. We do have a workload backlog with a lot of projects underway that
we could use to help with to move projects forward in an efficient manner and,
hopefully, see that it's not just a current workload, but we also know that other things are
coming. We have ongoing needs for pathways coordination and master plan
implementation and we don't have anyone currently that can own that. This position
could own that. We need to do a better job of coordinating with staff reports, giving
comments on development applications, making sure that our needs are met in regards
to pathways specifically and other park-related items. We need someone who can look
out for GIS support for our department and this could be someone that can do that, as
well as help us to coordinate the partnerships. I did a -- I don't think this is all the
projects, but we don't have a project management staff currently, but we have many
current projects and many of these have been listed, but there are others as well. The
8th Street pathway, Bud Porter extension, Fothergil, Five Mile Creek, Centennial Park
upgrade, pathway master plan amendments tennis partnership, changes to the MYB
and PAL partnerships, dog park task force, Ten Mile, Heroes Park phase three,
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June 8, 2010
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maintenance building concept plans, and the Kleiner Park coordination, which is a large
item of its own. It's hard to touch all these in any given week with the current staff and
reclassifying this position would help us to move these forward in a more timely manner.
We also know that there are upcoming projects that we could use the help for. We have
an annual allocation of pathway projects that we will need to implement. We anticipate
future CDBG projects. We have got potential projects coming for Storey Park
development, and Borup design and development, 77 acre park design, neighborhood
park coordination, Rails to Trails. Settlers Village Square, two additional upcoming
phases. Bridgetower pathway. It's time to do a new park system master plan and this
could help with that. Other future partnerships and Williams Watson Park is also
coming in at some point. We have the existing position. We'd like to reclassify it and
use this person to help us with not only these projects, but the other things related to the
pathways coordination and GIS and partnerships as noted on the previous slide. And I
would -- I would seek your -- your feedback as to if you would see that as a good thing.
can either pause here for a feedback on that specifically -- shall I do that and just ask
Mayor and Council at least for your thoughts.
De Weerd: Council, any comments? Steve and I have talked about it and, you know,
with the considerations that he brought in front of you, that I certainly supported this
request to Council.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor, I would just comment it sounds reasonable to me.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Have you discussed it with the liaison?
De Weerd: The liaison was just going to make comment.
Rountree: Brad Hoaglun was going to --
Bird: Yeah. I know. That's what I -- I think it's probably a position you need to fill, even
in these dire times, when we don't need to add any expenses, but -- but we are not
adding any expenses, evidently. We are just replacing Craig's job description.
Siddoway: Yeah. And it is a reclassification, so it's a slightly higher classification.
Bird: That's what -- I knew that. Yeah.
Siddoway: And we talked about that.
Bird: I have no problem with hit.
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Hoaglun: Madam Mayor and Steve, I was just going to say, you know, you might talk
about -- there was discussion past budget cycles about a forester or tree specialist -- I
can't remember the name of it.
Siddoway: The arborist.
Hoaglun: The arborist. Thank you. Versus this project manager. So, you might -- as
you get into that -- if that is your next slide, mention --
Siddoway: We do have the need for both and the arborist would be a separate position
and is a separate need, but -- but we are tying that one to the Kleiner Park and still
would not intend to fill that position until Kleiner Park is coming on line. It's agood --
De Weerd: I'm sorry, Steve. Just to get clarification on the other ones from your
Council liaison.
Hoaglun: Yeah. That is something we talked about and no problems there. Just
looking down the road as parks grows and expands, there are other needs, but certainly
the project manager one is something that -- to fulfill that vacancy is something that we
should definitely move forward with as soon as possible.
De Weerd: If there is no -- okay.
Siddoway: We will move forward with that as soon as possible I think is what I will take
away from that. The Meridian urban forestry, we have a growing number of trees in our
system. We have talked about this before. We had the enhancement for this last year,
we withdrew pending the work on Kleiner Park. You can see that we -- with the new
park in the last year, we are now over 2,000 trees in the existing system. Kleiner Park
alone will add another approximately a thousand trees to that number. I know another
related item of interest to Council is how we are doing on the downtown tree
replacements. We have put together this slide to try and help -- help show that. You
can see the past years up to the current -- from 2002 on with the number of tree boxes
replaced. You can see that in the last two years we have stepped that up quite a bit
from one, two boxes a year up to seven and eight boxes year. There is still a large
number to be replaced, though. So, we are making headway. We are doing
somewhere in the neighborhood of, you know, five to ten a year in the current cycle and
-- but there are a total of 69 or -- left to be done, a total of 96 existing tree boxes in the
downtown area. So, that is the progress that is being made and we have made -- we
have stepped up our efforts and at replacing more in the last couple of years since I
have been here.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
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Bird: Steve, before you go any farther, what are we -- what are we paying for -- to
replace those boxes. Re-doing. Do you remember?
Siddoway: Elroy, do you have any of those numbers off the top of your head?
Huff: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, when we first started out we were in one
or two learning how to do those and design them. We were in a couple thousand
dollars for one of those holes to be replaced. When we got into that real busy high
construction time in this valley, those prices went up. We have been as high as 3,500
per hole and we are right in that range right now.
Siddoway: Does that include the irrigation?
Huff: Yeah. That's complete.
Siddoway: And that includes that -- we, as a department, actually construct the tree
well frames and Terry Whipple, our fabricator, actually constructs those to help save us
money. That's part of why the numbers are so low.
Bird: That's part of the 3,500 dollar figure in cost, isn't it?
Siddoway: Yeah.
Bird: Is labor and stuff figured in that?
Siddoway: I don't think his labor is.
Huff: Yeah. That might not be.
Siddoway: That would be the contractor amount.
Huff: That contractor amount is there. The frames we just wanted that out of the
budget and --
Bird: You don't figure his -- that steel and his wages in the cost of per redo?
Huff: That's not -- his wages are not included in the 3,500, but the steel is.
Bird: The steel is?
Huff: Yeah.
Bird: Okay.
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Huff: Those frames generally cost -- they were about 200 dollars before we first started
using this frame. They were about 425 dollars per frame, which we have done for less
than a hundred.
Bird: Yeah. Thank you. I just couldn't -- I couldn't remember the figures on it.
Siddoway: Any questions on the downtown trees? Garrett, have you -- Garrett Wright
joined our team last December and I don't know if -- I think everyone had -- has had at
least one chance to meet Garrett, but Garrett has taken on our sports leagues and has
stepped right in and does a fantastic job at dealing with the -- all of the issues that
surround building of, you know, a multiple sport league. And I want to thank you,
Garrett, for joining our team and for just the way you have come right on board and
taken ownership of this. We have several sports. Softball. Have both -- three divisions.
Coed, men's, and the girls fast pitch. Basketball. We have both men's and women's.
Volleyball we have coeds and women's. Dodge ball, which was added a couple of
years ago. We have an open league and coed. And, then, flag football. We actually
hope to add this fall for our first time and Garrett's run a football program before and we
look forward to that. And, in addition, as requested by Council, we continue to track our
resident and nonresident participation. This shows -- this slide shows you by the
numbers some of the growth that we have been seeing in our sports leagues. Each
different color represents a different sport, but -- for each year and they are stacked on
top of each other to give you an overall participation by number of teams. You can see
that in 2009 and '10 we are already well ahead of where we were just last year. In
relation to that, I know there has been at least some questions about the field usage for
our softball fields and whether they are vacant or whether they are full. So, thought I
would bring you the numbers of our use of the existing softball fields this spring. Over
the spring season there were a total of 742 game times available for use and 696 of the
game times were filled. That's 90 percent full. We, basically, have 11 -- 11 game slots
on any night. So, having 90 -- 94 percent fill rate leaves only 46 times not used, which
is, basically, four days and that's a Monday through Friday schedule. They aren't -- we
haven't included Saturdays and Sundays. But of those 46 open times, 22 of them are in
the day before memorial weekend -- Memorial Day weekend or the Fourth of July
weekend, which aren't very popular for holding games, so if you subtract those out, we
have only got two days left available for rain out games, which we need based on the --
the weather we have been having this -- this spring. But you can see there the use by
the Meridian Parks and Rec in the blue. Other team reservations in the red and, then,
the unused game times that are in the yellow color. So, any questions about our use of
the existing fields?
Hoaglun: Steve, I just wanted to comment to you, this shows a priority need for -- for
more fields, I mean especially if population continues to grow, their use is popular,
where ever you go it's full. Parking lots are full and you go watch a game and you got to
wait for that first league to leave to find a place to park for the next one, which is great,
we love it, challenges with that, though, but definitely have to keep pushing forward on
that, which I know you guys are.
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Siddoway: Yes. We hope to. Thank you. Any other questions? We have -- you might
guess, we have also seen the same kind of increased use of gym usage and if you look
at that yellow bar -- part of the bar, you know, we are not even through with this year
and we have already -- still got dodge ball to go, which is right on the top of 2009 and
'10 bar and -- but that yellow one, which spring volleyball, is double the size and
probably -- maybe even a little more than double, Garrett, from the previous year? We
have seen this tremendous interest in growth in that and we are having a very difficult
time finding gym space for the -- the demands that we have for the program. I think that
you will agree that we strive to provide high quality maintenance of our existing parks.
I'm so pleased to hear comments that we have the best parks in the state, the best
parks in the valley, that people love to come to our parks, because they are so well
maintained and beautiful. Also to help meet services meet demand, we support private
nonprofit youth sports programming through activities, through Meridian Youth Baseball,
PAL and others as well in our parks through various partnerships. Moving on. We
strive to create a safe environment for all of our employees and we have implemented
in the last year a monthly safety training program for our maintenance staff and that's
been held regularly and Mike -- you got to stand before, but this is the one that I was
going to have you stand and be acknowledged on, so Mike -- Mike has implemented
these -- these safety training and, you know, when I was talking to the Mayor a week or
so ago, I made a comment that we are a seven day a week operation and that we have
-- we have weekend supervisors now and things like that and she seemed surprised
and so I wanted to make sure everyone was aware that, you know, Saturdays and
Sundays are our busiest times for shelter reservation and the cleanup we have to do
and so we do have, as staff, here seven days a week and Mike's our foreman and he
runs those crews and schedules the staff that are out there and he's recently gone
through function based assignment process to help us be more efficient with the
assignment of our existing crew and I just want to acknowledge Mike for his efforts
there. Thanks, Mike. We strive to provide timely training and professional
development opportunities for our staff to make sure that they are trained and keep their
certifications up and current. We are working with legal and, Bill, I want to acknowledge
Emily. It's still ongoing, but we continue to work on an update to our parks and
recreation ordinances. We are very cognizant of customer service and I mentioned
Janice is our front line, but Hillary is our seasonal at the front desk this summer as well
and we all strive and, hopefully, you have the sense that we strive to treat all customers
as if they were family. It's also very important to us that not only are our employee's
safe, but the public is safe in using our facilities. The splash pad opened last week. We
have our splash pad attendants hired and on staff, there is daily monitoring of the
splash pad. We have also assigned to Brad Day, a monthly inspection of all of our
playground equipment and that is now -- is going on and being documented. We
coordinated as we can with the police department on CPTED issues for the designs and
have been doing so quite extensively on the Kleiner Park. We strive to use our
departmental resources lightly and one of the things that does stretch our resources is
partnerships and we seek partnerships. I know the Mayor encourages us to seek
partnerships and at any given time and they don't all pan out, but we are seeking
forward and at least working on the development of partnerships regularly. We are
committed to being accountable for every dollar that we spend, only asking for things
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that we need and ask that all personnel monitor expenses and insure that the taxpayer
interests are protected. One way we do that is with volunteers. This is a story that I
think's worth telling. Last -- or I guess it was two months ago now, but in April, which
had both Arbor Day and Earth Day in them, we have had multiple groups seeking to do
volunteer projects, planting trees and related things within parks and we had almost 700
volunteer hours for our department in April alone. We put some hours over the last four
years and some dollar values reflected by volunteer hour rates from
independentsector.org, which has specific to Idaho numbers and every dollar that is
saved through volunteer efforts is a dollar that we don't have to spend as a city and so
we are grateful to receive those volunteer efforts and Colin in his re-division of duties,
he actually is coordinating our volunteer efforts this year in a way that we have never
been able to do before and that's great. I just want to -- I'm not going to read this whole
slide, I just want to say that we don't -- we haven't forgotten the public input survey and
the things that we do strategically, we try to think about what the demands are on the
city. That playground are the number one reason why people come. There has been --
for -- there has been a lot of feedback that our special events, our parks, and our
programs are all excellent or good. Flag football was a program requested in the public
input survey and that we hope to implement this fall. And, then, new amenities that
came out strong in this survey a couple of years ago was the dog park and frisbee golf
and we are trying to address those needs. We have some commission members here.
Treg Bernt is our -- our newest member of the commission and you may remember
appointing him a couple months ago. Michael Martin and Phil Liddell. Do we have any
others here? So, three of our parks commissioners and I want to recognize them. They
set some commission-wide goals that I thought were worth mentioning. The new dog
park sits at the top of that list for them. They want to investigate the feasibility of a BMX
facility, focused on the Borup property concept plan, which, as you know ties into that
desire for a dog park. They have a strong focus on pathways plan implementation and
we -- twice a year we go on pathway tours and their fifth priority is to locate for us the
new park and shop and help us in those efforts. We have three committees --
subcommittees of that commission that are very active and meet every month. It's
interesting when I first started these committees were almost not meeting and now it's
almost always more than once a month that they are -- that they are meeting. They
held a meeting today, just before -- just before this on the parks amenities and the signs
committee. Recent accomplishments. We are going to do recent accomplishments and
challenges and, then, we are done and we can move on to other agenda items.
Hoaglun: Steve, before you get to recent accomplishments, if you'd go back one slide.
Siddoway: Yes, sir.
Hoaglun: Just -- I don't recall you mentioning it, but the new parks maintenance shop is
something I think Council will be -- be discussing in the future and a need that's out
there that we going to have to plan for and whatnot, so I just wanted to draw their
attention to that, that that's coming down the pike and it's one you can put off for awhile,
but there will be a time when we won't be able to ignore it that much longer, so --
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Siddoway: Yeah. And we were budgeted through enhancement this current fiscal year
to do a concept plan. We have been working on that and you will see in our CIP
presentation that we are anticipating that coming online in the next couple of years. We
also received an enhancement this year for the addition of disk golf courses and 18
holes split between two parks, we have nine holes in Settlers Park, nine holes Bear
Creek, both are the winter disk golf courses, so as to not conflict with our softball,
baseball, and other sports activities in the summer. But those are in. I can tell you I'm
already getting e-mails, you know, why do they have to come down, can't they be up.
mean they are very popular and people love them and we are hoping to get another
nine holes in Kleiner Park that could be up year around. Gordon Harris Park shelter
was recently completed last month. There is a photo of it there on the top. It's a unique
shelter. I love it. As you look at it I think you will see that it has a unique look and is
quite attractive and has become one of our new, very popular shelters to reserve. That
strange looking contraption to the right of it is the -- the Neos 360 play structure and
that's -- that's the element that's going into Centennial Park and it's being funded
through the CDBG grant in addition to a park shelter -- a picnic shelter that will be next
to it there as well. Neos is going in first. It's actually -- I think they were pouring
concrete for it today and should be up in the next couple of weeks and the bid for the --
the shelter -- let's see, has the bid opening already been had? Monday. Monday is the
bid opening on the shelter and those improvements are coming to Centennial Park
soon. Look forward to having that. It should be a very fun and unique element to make
that unlike any other. What it does, just so you know, those little orange and purple
pods that you kind of see on the posts have a circle that lights up in different colors and
you can play yourself, you can play against somebody and it's kind of like Lakimol with
lights, if you will. You know, the lights light up and you have to touch it and there is high
ones and low ones and they are all around you going on and off and there is a -- there
is different games you can play and that purple post structure that's off to the side
actually allows you to select which game you want to play and with summer camp that's
going to be there in the community center right adjacent to it, we think this will be
incredibly popular with the kids that are part of that program all summer long. The
gaming tables have been a goal of the commission and the committee for quite awhile
and we are pleased to say that two gaming tables with checkers or chess boards have
been installed, one in Centennial Park and one in Generations Plaza and are available
to the public. Heroes Park phase three is also a very recent accomplishment and I was
there the day -- we haven't done a grand opening and we won't until the Public Works
finishes the water demonstration portion of this, but the playground elements and the
pathway elements are in. I was there a month ago when the -- the caution tape came
down and the kids swarmed from the neighborhood and it was just amazing to see them
come out, even without official groundbreaking as soon as it came down they just
swarmed and there was kids all over that playground and loving it and I had several
parents come up to me and thank me for what we have been able to do there with the
city. We have implemented some city wide recycling programs for printer cartridges
and cell phones and we are using that to help raise some funds, it's just kind of minimal,
but some funds that will help us go back towards parks. We have done new downtown
banners. Hopefully you have seen in the last week the new summer banners that have
gone up around downtown with the help of MDC and we have the Meridian's Promise
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banners and the winter banners, so we now have three separate banners that will be
interchanged over the course of the year in the downtown area. We received several
awards, the Nickelodeon Parents Picks for best park in the Boise area was given to
Settler's Park and Adventure Island playground last summer. At the IRPA conference
we received the outstanding facility and parks special use award for Settlers Village
Square phase one and as you may have heard at the AIC conference coming up this
month, we have just received notice that the same project, we will also be receiving a
city achievement award. Challenges. We have plenty, but as you know with
development down and revenues are down and we have to respond to that, thus cutting
back our CIP and knowing, you know, in advance that we won't meet our goals, but we
can still do much to move toward them. But at the same time with fees being down this
term that we have talked about before called stay-cations that a lot of people are staying
home and we have actually seen increased use of our parks in this down economy with
people choosing to stay home and recreate here. Those economic challenges are
impacting -- or can impact pay to play recreation, although we seem to be -- still be
seeing an increase in registrations. There is also, you know, new challenges coming
with, you know, fees for gym space for us and related issues. Perhaps challenges isn't
the right word, but there is certainly a lot going on that has to be done for -- well,
challenge is the right word. Getting ready for Kleiner Park, you know, it's wonderful, but
it -- there is a lot going on there, as well as the efforts with the dog park task for Borup.
We are locating -- working to locate the new maintenance facility site, as Councilman
Hoaglun said. Oh, we have got that one in there twice. And, then, the project
management need, which we talked about earlier. And, then, the growing lack of gym
and field space for our growing sports program and needing to find ways to address
that. So, those are some of the challenges that we are faced with and with that I'm
going to stop and thank you for your time and invite any other questions or comments.
De Weerd: Thank you, Steve. Council, any questions? Comments? Steve, I would
like to thank you and your staff for being here and you do a lot for our community. You
put a great face on it and we appreciate all you do and certainly for the commission.
Certainly you have stepped up and as Steve noted spent considerably more time than
you did a couple of years ago and greatly appreciated the accomplishments, the
energy, and the momentum that's been created with the commission and engaging our
community. So, thank you for your service to our community. It's greatly appreciated.
Siddoway: Thank you very much.
Zaremba: Thank you.
C. Mayor's OfFice: Community Liaison Update
De Weerd: Okay. Luke. Item No. 6-C. Oh, you know, Luke, before you start, there
was a comment in our 6-A that if -- on the public record and I didn't want to get into it at
that time, but as I was sitting there I think that it needs to be noted on the public record.
One of the people said he was not allowed to participate in the Ten Mile area specific
plan and for the public record we had numerous public charrettes, public hearings, there
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was an opportunity for any member of the public to comment and so I should have said
it then, but I do want -- because we do have people that read these minutes, I think it's
worth noting that the public can participate at any point and we encourage that. With
that said, hi, Luke.
Cavener: Good evening, Madam Mayor, Mr. President, Members of Council. It's been
awhile since I've had the opportunity to come before you and give you a community
liaison update for, but I'll maybe begin my comments with echoing on what the Mayor
said. I'm in a very unique position in that oftentimes people will come and say
something to me that for whatever reason they don't feel they want to waste your time
with or bother you, so I hear a lot of those things and by and large the biggest comment
that I hear is what a great job our community does in making people aware of events
that are going on. I have even been accused of us promoting things too much and
take that as a compliment. If someone is upset that we have promoted something too
much, that's great, that means that we are doing a good job of getting the word out.
That's why I think there is more opportunities to approach new audiences and do a
better job, but I wanted to share that with you just based on the Mayor's previous
comments. So, a lot has been accomplished since the last time that I spoke. One of
my favorite parts of these Council meetings has been when our youth have been able to
come before you and share what they have been doing in the youth council and with
TAC and so I won't spend very much time on talking about that, but I will let you note
that we will be sending four members of our youth council to the AIC convention next
week. That is the must attend event for them. They are excited about it and I know
they are just thrilled to have the opportunity --
De Weerd: There is five to --
Cavener: Unfortunately, we planned to send five and I received notice today that our
news and communications coordinator for next year, Carson Douglas, is going to be
having a root canal next week and so he will be unable to attend. We will be sending
four. In addition, the youth council will be picking up and staying active this summer.
They have a planning session scheduled for July where they will actually map out what
next year will look like. I am pleased to report that the Meridian Chamber of Commerce
has approached us and want to be involved in this as well. I find that as a unique
opportunity to build a partnership to benefit our youth of the community. Lots have been
going on in our neighborhoods. I know that a lot of you have heard the events going on
related to Settlers Park and Cedar Springs. We continue to work with that
neighborhood to find parking solutions. We made some changes there recently in
conjunction with ACHD and while it's by no means a perfect solution, by and large the
bulk of the neighborhoods have appreciated what's been done and look forward to see
what other avenues are available to help reduce the amount of parking in their
neighborhood. I have had a lot of correspondence this spring with our golf course and
with the residents that surround that golf course. By and large the residents and the
neighbors that surround the course have been very pleased with the new management
and the things that they have done to beautify the course and to make sure that the
nature and the wildlife that live on the course are able to coexist with our golfers. We
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have also done other outreach events, such as our town halls related to automated
collection. We have had one last month. We will be having two more, one tomorrow
night, one next week. It's been -- I shared this in our staff meeting today in outreach to
inform people about this, I have gotten the response that hasn't this already happened,
why are we talking about this. I didn't know that I needed to be more informed. I
received post cards. I have heard the PSAs on the radio. I have seen the information
on the website. I didn't realize that it hasn't already started, that it won't start until July.
And I still let them know that it's a great opportunity to come have dialogue with SSC
and to speak with the city about things that are on their mind. Part of my monthly
dialogue has been with our seniors at the Meridian Senior Center. Steve touched on it
during his report that they are excited and eager to move into their new facility in Kleiner
Park and begin whatever processes that are needed for them to raise the funds to put
the amenities in their building that they will need to have. I know that they have
amazing plans to turn it into an event center where people can get married or have
corporate retreats and whatnot and I think the backdrop of Kleiner Park will be an
excellent location for that. Something new that has sprung up -- no pun intended --
since we last spoke -- is an outreach from a group to create a community garden in
Meridian. What I found fairly unique about this is they weren't looking to say to the city
create a community garden for us, it was a group saying we want to have a community
garden in Meridian, we want to have a presence. What can the city do to help us. And I
really appreciate that they weren't looking to have the city do something for them, just to
assist them with answering questions about what is legal and to guide them through the
planning process. What's really been unique is over the course of three months they
had three different locations where they were planning to have this park. They really
wanted to have it in downtown. I know at one point they were exploring having it near
the golf course and when Westside Bible Church on Fairview next to Sonic stood up
and said we have two acres that we'd like to make available to you free of charge, just
really worked, it had great access for the people that wanted to use that, so right now
the group is about 16 people. They had a planting event last week that received some
news coverage from Channel 6. I think the story is supposed to run tomorrow night.
And it's been a great process to watch this group of people really come together, some
friends, some strangers, to create a community garden. The crops that come from this,
half will be delivered to the Meridian Food Bank, so they can provide produce for the
Food Bank and the other half will be split amongst the group that are developing the
garden. Other community updates, things that have been going on is through our office
we have launched another new outreach program called this week in Meridian, which is
a video update that allows people to know what's going on in Meridian. So, this update
we are -- to steal a line from SSC, we are talking trash and we are educating people
about the town hall meetings and providing some of the answers to the frequently asked
questions that we received and this will be an ongoing weekly video project and our
hope is that we can use different staffs from amongst the city to help brand the city and
expose our community to the people that work at City Hall that really work for our
citizens, as far as it's been a unique opportunity to really showcase different aspects of
the city and I look forward to working with other departments to make that a total
success. Since we last spoke, the organization -- the Meridian Downtown Business
Association is dissolved. There was a feeling amongst a very small core group that
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there wasn't enough participation amongst the downtown businesses to make it a viable
group and they felt that they were really focusing on events and not really focusing on
driving business downtown and so at that point they chose to dissolve. Since then other
area business owners have come together to try and find a way to reform this
organization and it's surprising sometimes it takes something to go away before it can
be rebuilt again and I'm excited to see what the ideas and plans these businesses have
to reenergize what's going on in downtown Meridian. One of the big events that the
Downtown Business Association put on every year was a play in the plaza event. The
business owners, Corkscrew, All American Insurance and D.L. Evans Bank didn't want
that event to go away. So, just because the organization dissolved, they had come
together with the efforts to do promotions, to do sponsorships and are continuing to
offer free live music down in Generations Plaza, they have continued to partner with
restaurants like Flat Bread and Pie Hole to have food and beverages available to people
who want to come and enjoy that. We have had two, believe it or not, Meridian
Business Day events since the last time we spoke. One last winter, the second one last
week. Our meeting last week was actually one of our lower attended, we only had
about between 250 and 300 people, but the feedback that we got this time was a ways
and means better and above than what we received for every event. People really felt
that the event was well ran, the variety of speakers that we provided and we continue to
offer a great value for our businesses and having dialogue with all of our speakers who
are presented, they felt that one of the reasons why there was lower attendance this
year is more people had things to do, they have more work to do, and I take that as a
good thing. I would much rather have people that have work and jobs that they are
going to have to attend than to come to our event. The group that planned this event
that I helped participate with are active and excited about having the fourth one
sometime in September and this time we are going to wipe the slate clean and have a
whole new list of speakers. So, anyone who has participated in Meridian Business Day
before won't have the opportunity to do this, we are going to open it up for new people
and we are actually going to allow our participants to vote, so they will be the ones that
will be deciding these area topics that I want to hear, these are the speakers who I want
to have involved and I look forward as we move closer to keep you updated and at the
very least you should stop by for a free lunch from one of our Meridian businesses.
Coffee with the Mayor is another event that our office has done and Shelly does a great
job of putting these on. These are events that I think partially through our past success,
in addition to our communication efforts, have become more and more popular and it's
not only a great opportunity to interact with our Mayor, with our Councilmen, our
department directors, but to network and in these trying economic times it's a great
opportunity to find new business. So, I think with that that's kind of the super fast cliff
notes version, but I wanted to give you a sprinkling of some of the things that are going
on. On a quick side note, I really need to thank all the departments in the City of
Meridian, it's -- a day doesn't go by that I'm not bothering or bugging a department
director or staff with an issue or an inquiry and I'm just so appreciative of how every time
and in every instance staff and directors are willing to take time out of their busy
schedule and they have got lots going on, to walk me through the process, so that I can
work with citizens to keep them educated. So, I'd just really like to thank them all. And
with that I will stand for questions.
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De Weerd: Thank you, Luke. Any questions?
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Luke, you indicated that the group had landed a two acre parcel for their
community garden?
Cavener: Correct.
Rountree: Again, where is that located?
Cavener: It's -- Westside Bible Church is on Fairview. It's in between --
Bird: It's right by the Chevron.
Cavener: By the Chevron. It's behind the church.
Rountree: Oh. Okay.
Cavener: And the church has agreed to lease it to this group for a year for a dollar.
They assisted with putting in a water path into their well. Tamarack Landscape came in
and piled up all the land. They received some donations from Idaho Power and from
some other organizations to provide soil, hay, and a few tools. So, it's been really
amazing to watch them be very active in literally 90 days. Actually, a little less than that.
Rountree: So, how much of that two acres are they going to be able to use?
Cavener: My thoughts in looking at it on Saturday is probably 15, 20 percent. They
want to start very small, because they don't want to spread themselves too thin.
Rountree: I might have another location for you
Cavener: Excellent.
De Weerd: Great. Any other questions or comments?
Zaremba: Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you, Luke.
Cavener: Thank you. You all have a nice evening.
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D. Multiple Department Report: City Wide Capital Improvement
Plan
De Weerd: Okay. 16-D is regarding our city wide Capital Improvement Plan. So, multi-
departmental. General Fund.
Kilchenmann: General Fund. What we are going to present to you today is the work of
several months and much agony, but it's aprocess -- I'm going to briefly -- I'm going to
introduce the process to you and briefly tell you what we went through and kind of what
we have and where we would like to go in the future. So, I have prepared capital
improvement plans before for the city and they have -- you know, we have published
them and they are on our website, but they have kind of been just a list of everything
we'd like to do ever and, then, some funding information. So, what we have done now
is we have tried to present you with something that we realistically think we can fund.
So, we actually started this right before Jack left and, then, we stopped so we could
make sure he didn't miss any of it. But it started with each department, each General
Fund department prepared individually a list of projects that they felt were necessary or
equipment -- capital kind of projects they needed to do and that list was 95 million
dollars. So, at the same time in Finance we were working on a revenue projection and
it was not 95 million dollars, in fact, it was much less than 95 million dollars. So, we
started -- we started with a ten year scope and we are going to try to do each capital
project year by year for ten years and the scope was too big, so what we did was we
went down to details -- a five year detail, each project year by year, and, then, we just
did the second five years with the project, we didn't try to split them into years. So, each
department went back and they worked with their individual list and reduced them
considerably and, then, we all sat down in the same room and under the Mayor's
direction and mediation, we managed to work together to prioritize the list and get it into
kind of a manageable level, which is the one you have, and it's an ever changing
document, it's changed like 12 times in the last 24 hours, so the one I handed out to you
is the last -- it's the latest iteration. We also considered additional operating costs,
which you will find in the column to the very right-hand side, I haven't entered it into the
financing projection yet, but some of the projects, like fire stations, have pretty
significant operating costs and we wanted to include those in our plan. So, where we
ended up and where we are now is we have gone from a 95 million dollar capital
improvement plan to a 40 million ten year capital improvement plan. The basic way we
did the revenue -- I did the revenue is we said General Fund will have revenue available
for capital, about a million dollars a year. We already had 1.7 million dollars in the
public safety fund. We considered that. We considered use of rural fire revenues over
the ten year plan, about 4.6 million. Using the unrestricted fund balance, we have got
8.3 million and, remember, our fund balance right now is about between 17 and 18
million. Use of impact fees, 13.4 million. Impact fees are projected at a pretty modest
level. What I projected for next year was just about what we are doing this year. So,
not -- not a real high rate of growth in that projection. We ended up -- we get to the very
end of the ten years, we have about 1.6 million that would be unfunded and which,
essentially, would come out of fund balance, so that would increase our fund balance
level -- or our unrestricted fund balance level to about ten million. And, then, we have
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3.5 million in addition to operating that over ten years would slowly be adding to our
base. So, in the schedule we prepared, the one that's very small print and legal size,
it's year by year~each project, so 2011 is what is in the budget now, hopefully, for now.
And, then, each year projected out. And, then, we have prepared schedules that show
if you summarize the five years and just list it by department, same for the second five
years and, then, for the entire ten years. So, kind of where we want to go with this is, of
course, to give you an opportunity to ask the departments' questions and I think we
want to get to the point where we actually formally adopt this capital improvement plan.
We will probably do that toward the fall, because we want to do it before we started on
the next year's budget. By formally adopt I don't mean to commit yourself for ever and
ever, but that this is an unchanging document, because that's, obviously, not going to
happen with a long term plan, but just kind of that we start a formal process of looking
ahead for our capital improvement plan and not just looking at our annual budget every
year. So, before you ask questions -- or the departments do their presentations, are
there any questions about the process? Okay. Who wants to be first? I know Steve's
already. Okay.
Lavey: Madam Mayor, Mr. President, Council, our list is the shortest so I'll go first.
think this process started over a year ago. It wasn't just a couple months ago. And this
-- I mean we got into the point of replacing carpets in buildings and painting walls and
everything else and so that's kind of what made it into the 95 million and, then, we
reduced it from there. I have a real short list and it's the reoccurring items that have
been on there for years. The first one is replacement of our fleet vehicles. As you know
on our police cars, we drive them 24 hours a day and significant wear and tear is
produced and we have been really good about replacing those vehicles, but we haven't
been so good about replacing the administrator's and sport vehicles, so what was
normally costing us about 200,000 dollars a year has cost us about 300,000 dollars a
year now to replace. The training -- police training center and indoor range is still on
here. The building expansion, we have talked about that for several years now. We
have pushed that back for several years, simply because there is no real money to
finance that, so that's been pushed back, but it's still included. And, then, the ever
growing need of an animal shelter as we get evicted off of the current property and
those are my four items and I would entertain any questions that you have.
De Weerd: Thank you. Any questions at this point, Council?
Bird: I have none.
De Weerd: Okay. Thanks.
Niemeyer: Madam Mayor, Members of Council, my list is the longest list, I guess Jeff
jumped up here first, because he has the shortest, but I can blame everything on Chief
Anderson, so -- I adopted his CIP. As you look through this, one of the things that the
chief and I talked about is the replacement versus the refurbishing fire engines. As you
know, a fire engine is not a cheap piece of equipment. We believe we can do a good
mix of refurbish versus replacement to keep those costs down. As you recall, the
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refurbishment gets us roughly five to ten years, just depending on where. So, it extends
the life of that fire engine and, then, at some point needs to be replaced. You can also
see that we do have three stations projected. Obviously, that's going to be based upon
growth and demand. So, that may shift as Stacy alluded to, to be pushed back if we
need to. Unfortunately, when you build a station we know that the minimum staffing
levels dictate how many people we have to hire and so that is a big expense. We will
not push for those stations unless the demand and the projection indicates. As you can
see also with Station 6, that is anticipating the growth that the Ten Mile interchange --
depending on what we see out there, that will also dictate the ladder truck versus the
fire engine. So, we will have to just wait and see how that progresses. You can also
see in there we do have a -- I think we have water tender twice. I'm going to have to get
together with Stacy on that, but we do have a replacement for a water tender 31, that is
our portable 3,000 gallon water tank trunk that we will continue to need in the future for
those rural areas where we have no hydrant and water supply out in our rural district.
So, with that I'll stand for any questions. I know it's a pretty long list.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor and Chief, it is cheaper than the police department, though,
by --
Niemeyer: Thank you for noticing that.
Hoaglun: -- three hundred and some thousand, but -- and on the aerial truck planned
for Station 6, that operating cost, that includes a driver and another person or what's
included in that operating cost?
Niemeyer: As far as the operating cost goes, that would be a four man engine -- or
truck company. We have four people that are required to operate an aerial apparatus,
so that would be four people on each shift, so 12 people total.
De Weerd: Thank you, Mark.
Niemeyer: Thanks, Mayor.
Siddoway: I get the overachievement award. I actually put together a little PowerPoint.
Hoaglun: I'm a little nervous. This one shows 40 slides, too, at the bottom.
Siddoway: We started off this process saying, you know, last year if we were to
establish a capital improvements plan that met all of our goals, developed out
everything that we currently own, and met all the goals of the current CIP, including rec
and other things, what would that look like and we did that version. It was 50 million, I
believe, of the 95, and unrealistic. We had to get down to about 13 million and cut
deeply in order to -- to balance what we expected to have available in terms of
revenues. So, what is in our proposed CIP for 2010 to 2011, we have 500,000 in
pathway connections with an annual allotment of a hundred thousand in each of the five
years as a commission priority. We have a maintenance shop, which was alluded to
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earlier. Fund balance total of 1.9 million dollars, one a half million from -- for the
construction, 300,000 for land, 105,000 for construction documents and we have
outgrown our existing shop and those funds would get us a new site. Settlers Village
Square phase two is in there and with a half million from our impact fee fund. We really
only had two 500,000 dollar items, but we -- in the projections we only have one half
million, so we have proposed to allocate it toward this. One item that ought to be
discussed, possibly in future discussions around this, is we already know that the phase
two -- if we were to build our own version of Settlers -- of the remaining tennis courts in
Settlers Village Square, we have the construction documents already, we have the cost
estimates for it at 1.3 million dollars. Right now we are only showing a smaller amount
of 500,000, assuming that we reduce that amount and put that towards this partnership.
But that's a big if, you know, that they would have a lot of funds to raise. So, we may
want to put in the full 1.3 million in order to have in the plan that we would build our
phase as originally planned if the partnership is unsuccessful. Recreation center has
been in the CIP for years and it's always been about five to seven years out and in the
current CIP that was adopted in 2006 before I was here, there is a ten million facility and
all funded in General Fund. I don't really see that happening in the next ten years. So,
what Ihave -- and, actually, in the version it was a 15 million dollar facility, kind of like
what you see on the lower left-hand corner. That is not going to happen without some
kind of a serious partnership and to meet our needs for space, we really need a field
house and we could take that 15 million dollar rec center and cut it -- you know, take 90
percent of that out, leave ten percent, which would be 1.5 million, and do a field house
with gym space and meet some of our immediate needs. So, that 1.5 million dollar field
house is in there in place of the ten to 15 million dollar rec center. Kleiner Park
improvements. There is a total of 160,000 in. One of -- it was in two 80,000 dollar
allotments, the first of which was originally proposed to be in this year in our budget, but
a balancing, we have actually taken that out of our request for this year and -- but it still
shows up in the CIP, so that we can request them on an as needed basis once we
identify actual needs in that park. Storey Park development is also in the first five years
for the undeveloped parcel and trying to get a plan in place to aid our discussions with
the speedway, looking at replacing the restrooms that are out there and outdated and
those are eligible fora 50/50 split between General Fund and park impact. The Borup
property construction is in the next five years that, of course, will be -- the timing of that
will be determined on development and utilities coming to the site, but there is a
General Fund amount for the planning construction does and, then, a larger amount
from the park impact fund for the actual construction of the park, which is a guess,
without currently having a plan, but is based on previous per acre cost in other
community parks. For the 77 acres in south Meridian, we only have in here well
development on the site in the concept plan. We have to develop a well on the site in
the next five years or else we risk losing our water rights on that -- on that property. But
the actual park development has been postponed to outside the scope of this ten year
CIP. We have also included one neighborhood park, assumed to have donation for
land irrigation and green up, which would match our approximate contribution at
Renaissance Park. Rails to Trails, we didn't actually know it was going to show up in
my CIP, but it probably makes sense. I think this was seen as a fund balance I think,
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Mayor, a million dollars was thrown out as a place holder that it was meant to say
whatever is left available in that fund balance could go toward this item; is that correct?
De Weerd: Yes. It's a place holder
Siddoway: Uh-huh. So, here is a summary of all those based on the different funds.
Now, what's in the second five years --
Zaremba: You didn't dwell on that very long.
Siddoway: Well, we can go back there.
Zaremba: Give me another 30 seconds. Thank you.
Siddoway: A total of just under ten million dollars --
Zaremba: Okay.
Siddoway: -- in there. And it's through General Fund, park impact fees, and fund
balance. The pathway connections in the second five years, again, we have an annual
allotment continuing for 100,000 dollars each year. I don't know if the version you have
still has the -- a phase one development of the 77 acres. Actually had Stacy zero that
out and take that out. So, I think you may have the line with the word in it, but it is zero
in there for a reason. It was withdrawn. The third phase of that Settlers Village Square
project, which builds the actual village square on the corner, is in the second five years.
A second neighborhood park with just donation of land assumed is also in that second
five years. And, then, a land acquisition amount split between General Fund park
impact fees. So, this will be our summary for the second five years, totaling about 13
million dollars and getting us to where we needed to be to meet the balancing goals and
available funds. So, with that I will stand for any questions.
De Weerd: Thank you, Steve.
Siddoway: Oh, I'm sorry, you know what, that raises the question of what's out. I
almost forgot I had a couple of additional slides, because that's a lot that's in, right? So,
what are we not doing? Well, we are not doing that -- the recreation aquatic center
that's been talked about for 15 million dollars. We have replaced that with the 1.5
million dollar field house. We are not doing the multiple phases of the 77 acre
development. We are not proposing to do the overflow parking lot expansions at
Settlers and Heroes Parks. Not proposing to do the Bud Porter pathway landscape
improvements that we had in last year's draft, although a scaled down version could still
be done with one -- one or more of those annual allotments. We have taken out the
tennis court improvements out of the CIP for both Bear Creek and Gordon Harris.
Taken out the community center for Settlers Village Square. Taken out the 8th Street
Park restrooms and in order to meet our level of service goals we would need to acquire
and develop an additional 30 acre park in the next ten years, if we meet population
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projections. We also removed three neighborhood parks, two of which were assumed
to be donated, one that was to be purchased and, then, we traded out the specific
connections for the Meridian pathways master plan that -- which were about three to
five hundred thousand a year in the original version, for that 100,000 dollar annual
allotment. So, that gives you a summary of what we are -- what we are not doing of
some of the things that have been talked about as we -- as we cut things out of the
larger CIP, the original one. So, with that I'll stand for additional questions.
De Weerd: Thank you, Steve. Any questions, Council?
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Just two suggestions, at least on the spreadsheets that we have for the
south Meridian 77 acre development and on the south Meridian 77 acre well
development, and the deadline of the recreation center, again, it ought to be renamed to
field house to the --
Siddoway: On the spreadsheet?
Rountree: On the spreadsheet.
Siddoway: Okay. So, where is Stacy? We get that on the spreadsheets. Okay?
Rountree. Thank you.
De Weerd: Okay. Council, so as Stacy had mentioned, we are not asking for action by
Council, we wanted to get this to you. You have time to digest it. Feel free to contact
any of our directors with additional questions. Oh, yeah, we have IT's side. And some
of you share that, you know, this has fiscal reality to it and we appreciate the team
approach in trying to bring about something that is realistic and doable.
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I'm here on behalf of the IT
enhancements that are in the CIP and as you can see they are pretty consistent. We
are talking about hardware replacement, software replacement, computer replacements
over the next five years. What you don't see on there we had had originally and taken
out, so we could do a little more work, is the fiber enhancement. I know we have had
discussions about that, we know it's an important project, but getting that coordination
with the different agencies has really been a task. So, we didn't feel as the -- both the
Mayor, as well as the senior management to have it in your CIP when right now we
don't have a real number or realistic project in the books or on task. So, there certainly
may be in the future this coming back. If you recall, all of these IT portions of the CIP
came out of the study we did a couple of years ago and the recommendations out of
that consultant study, which included the fiber being done, but we are going to do a little
more work on that and we will bring that back and Terry will be talking to ACHD and
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June 8, 2010
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some of the other providers around town that we may be able to partner and we may be
bringing those back either in a piecemeal fashion or bring that back as part of your CIP
in the future. But other than we have pretty much consistent standard replacements
over time. We are still in a five year replacement on computers and, then, the hardware
and software that goes with that, as well as the other IT hardware, so -- other
questions?
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Rountree
Rountree: And not for Bill. Just a comment. I want to express my appreciation to the
directors and Mayor for doing this. At least we have place holders and identified
projects that can utilize those funds that stay in accounts for a lot of years and if people
are asking, well, why are you doing that, why don't you lower my taxes, then, we can at
least say this is what we are planning for. If that's not appropriate for the vision for the
city, then, maybe we can adjust these as we go through the public process. But up until
now we just had a wish list and as we go through these and if they all make sense to us,
then, I think we endorse them in the process and, then, we do have that map, if you will,
and guidance and/or leadership where those monies will go in the future. I really
appreciate it. It's a great effort.
De Weerd: It was a team effort and I think the directors have scars to prove it. And
they are singing Kumbaya now. Any wrap up remarks, Stacy?
Kilchenmann: I just -- is everybody agreeable that we -- that you take time to look at
these and, then, we do a little longer presentation of it, like in the fall, kind of a more
formal adoption? We also were waiting for an RFQ for the firing range, so we will have
kind of a better cost on that and, then, a couple other things we can iron out.
Bird: You bet.
Kilchenmann: Before you know it's the Fourth of July and, then, it's Christmas, so -- we
will bring it back. Thank you.
Bird: And the older you get, the faster it goes.
E. Public Works Department: Enterprise Fund Capital
Improvement Plan Update/Backflow Update
De Weerd: Thank you, Council. And thank you, directors. Okay. Our next item is
keeping in the theme of the Capital Improvement Plan, we have the Enterprise Fund in
front of you as well.
Barry: Good evening, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council.
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De Weerd: And another overachiever
Barry: Oh, thank you. Tonight we have two presentations for you. Unfortunately, there
is a little bit of an error on the agenda and it looks like on the agenda that this was a
single item, but, actually, we have two presentations. One on the Enterprise Fund,
Capital Improvement Plan update, and, then, a second on our back flow prevention
program. Mr. Warren Stewart, our engineering manager, is going to provide a brief
presentation on the Enterprise Fund and Capital Improvement Plan, but as I introduce
him I do want to say that I'm grateful for him joining our staff. He joined our staff about a
year ago and has done wonderful things in our engineering division. He has brought
about quite a few changes that have been very noticeable and have helped propel our
department forward. One of the most notable ones is one that he will be speaking with
you this evening about and that is developing a very robust five year capital
improvement program plan. So, without further adieu I will ask him to come up and give
him an opportunity to explain to you all the things we have done and, then, Iwill -- I and
he will be around for questions as it relates to the overall capital plan.
De Weerd: I will say he cleans up very nicely, too.
Stewart: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. And also, Tom, for those
remarks and pardon me for the glasses, but I will need them to be able to see my notes.
Tonight I'm hoping to give you sort of an overview of the capital improvement planning
process that we have gone through in the development of the binder which you have
before you, which is our five year Capital Improvement Plan. As you know we currently
provide -- oh, they actually have names on them. That's correct.
Rountree: They are probably all different, too.
Stewart: I hope not. We currently provide this capital planning in the four areas listed
on the slide that you have before you now. Although transportation is primarily in
coordination with ACHD and ITD. We hope that in the future multi-modal projects, as
well as street lighting in these unlighted areas of town will be a part of the capital
planning process. However, the document that you have before you tonight only
considers water, wastewater and reclaimed water projects in the Enterprise Fund.
Now, that didn't work. Well, it's there, but it's the wrong color. There we go. It all of a
sudden changed color on me. There we go. I just have to learn how to use the
technology. It is my hope the information we share with you will shed some light on how
we put together the capital improvement plan. It will also highlight some of the changes
that we have made, some of the challenges that we currently face, and some of the
improvements that we intend to make in the future. The document that you have before
you is a major guide not only for the engineering department, but for the entire city as
we move forward to build future infrastructure. It should also -- it should also serve as
an important communication coordination tool .and a confidence building tool for the
department and staff. Although the engineering department has been responsible for
the actual preparation of the document, many other departments and divisions have
been involved in providing information and also support in putting this together and I
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June 8, 2010
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want to publicly thank them for their help and for their effort. There is several steps in
the evolution of the capital plan. In the next few minutes I want to spend some time
explaining how we go through these steps. And, again, some of the challenges that we
currently face and some of the things that we are going to be doing to make
improvements. We will also take some time to discuss not only the planning phase for
the Capital Improvement Plan, but also the execution phase of -- and delivering these
projects to the city. There are many factors that influence identification of projects, as
you can see from -this list. One of the first things that we do in identifying potential
projects is use the master plans that have been created for the city. These master
plans establish current demands, future demands, and also help provide guidance in
meeting those future demands. One of the other things -- or a couple of the other things
that help us in establishing or identifying projects is system operation and system
modeling. Many of the capital improvement projects come to us as we received
comments from our operation staff on things that are working and things that need to be
improved and we also have had several opportunities to identify improvements in capital
projects through modeling that we do on the system. Coordination with both external
and internal agencies have also helped to identify projects. The fire department and the
engineering department have worked together on several occasions to find fire
protection deficiencies and change those or improve those with capital improvement
projects. We also coordinate with ACRD, ITD, DEQ, and EPA regarding necessary
capital improvement projects. Coordination of these projects can be challenging, but
Meridian's citizen's benefit with lower unit costs and fewer traffic delays. Infrastructure,
inspection, age, and material can also potentially identify projects. The addition on the
TV truck last year, as you can see from this photo, has helped us to identify many
capital projects which we will be addressing with future projects as -- that we identify
and this is actually a pipe that had tree roots growing in it, one of our collection systems.
We are also working with the consultants this time to produce revised master plans for
the water system, the wastewater collection system, the wastewater treatment plan -- or
plant and our reuse program and we hope next year to be able to complete a master
plan for the SCADA system for the city. These master plans will be important and key
documents in helping us to identify future capital projects and incorporate them in our
five year plan. Plan estimating. This is one of the areas where we have our greatest
challenge. We have many tools that we can utilize in estimating projects. One of the
things that we do is -- a lot of times is to look at past projects, similar projects that we
have completed and try and glean information from those projects to help us develop
project cost estimates for future projects. One of the challenges that we have ran into --
as acity we have commonly in the past bid these projects in a lump sum basis, which
limits the information that we have. So, one of the changes that we will be
implementing that should help us in establishing better cost estimates in the future is to
be changing to a line item bidding process where we can, then, take the information and
the uni-cost information from a project, put it into a database and recall that information
when we need it for future projects. Master plans also not only help identify capital
projects, but they include -- many of them include actual projects estimates for the
projects that they have shown. One of the problems that we have in this case, though,
is a lot of those projects that they identify and the costs that they associate with them,
those projects are sometimes five years and more out in the future and as we have
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seen, the economy can dramatically change the accuracy of those estimates and that's
always a challenge for us is to be able to take those estimates and, then, figure out how
to bring them up to current costs. So, that's -- although that's a useful tool in these
master plans, it can be somewhat of a challenge to make sure that they are accurate.
We are also using industry standard reference material for estimating through BSU, a
project estimating course. And not only was that course beneficial to them in helping
them to learn some of the techniques and some of the processes to putting together a
cost estimate, it also provided with some reference materials, some industry standard
reference material that has been very helpful. Again, one of the things that we have
discovered, though, is although that's helpful, it's national information and doesn't
necessarily accurately take into account Treasure Valley costs. So, we have to make
sure when we utilize that reference material that we were checking and that we are
ground truthing it with information that's closer to the Treasure Valley. Other factors that
include -- influence our project estimates are the timelines of the projects, weather, and
the complexity of these projects. One of the other things that we -- that we always have
to keep in mind or that causes us challenges in some of these projects. For instance,
our well projects and our recent project which will be starting construction of our water
source facility, our water tank, is the fact that some of these do not have sites identified
when the projects are budgeted and we have to make a general estimate of what the
site development costs will be and, as you know, sometimes those site development
costs can vary dramatically. They can be very simplistic in some cases, in other cases
they can involve a lot. For instance, of the things that has come up and that we are
addressing and dealing with in the water tank project is the fact that it's -- we wanted it
near a discharge point, so we could flush the tanks, but that also puts us in a situation
where we are in a flood plain and we are having to deal with the issues that come along
with that and that means that there is additional costs that we are having to
accommodate in our budgeting. To help us improve the accuracy of our cost estimating
we are working to develop a standardized process for cost estimating. One of the
things that you will -- you don't see in this version of the capital plan that you will see
next year is another form which will, essentially, act as a minimum standard that we will
utilize to establish project cost estimates. That will mean that each project that we bring
forward will have a minimum level of work and steps in the process to establish that
budget and to insure its accuracy. Prioritizing projects is kind of the next step. In the
past projects have -- we have considered or when project managers were establishing
cost estimates they looked at the items of the list that you see here on the page and
they used kind of a common sense approach to establish whether there was a high,
medium, or low priority on a project and that's worked fairly well. In the future, however,
we will be implementing a rating criteria, again, which all projects will be measured and
each one of these projects that we come up with will have a rating. We can, then, take
this rating, along with a little common sense and create a numerical priority for all the
projects that we have and I think this will allow us to have a much less subjective
process and improve our ability to prioritize projects. Scheduling is one of the
challenges that we have had. Currently we don't have any kind of a formal schedule --
scheduling software or scheduling process and this is one of the things that we intend to
change. Each project manager has just worked diligently to insure that each task is
completed as they come up. We are currently establishing a formalized process for
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developing these schedules and this process will include, if approved by the Council in
2011, the purchase of project management software, which will help us to establish
project schedules, so that we can track key project tasks from the very beginning of the
design phase to the project completion. One of the things that it will also allow to do,
not only will we be able to establish, you know, kind of a task schedule on these
projects, but we also intend to develop a financial schedule on projects that will allow us
to track budget expenditures throughout the entire process. So, we will actually have
two schedules and in next year's binder you will actually see that as one of the forms as
well. There will be a project schedule and there will be a financial schedule that will
month by month not only keep us on track of the task, but keep us on track financially.
These tools will be a great help as we move forward, because they will allow us the
opportunity to recognize quickly when a project is beginning to slip behind schedule and
take steps to get it back on schedule fast. Document preparation is the next step and
that's, basically, what you have before you today and we have touched on some of the
forms and other information that's included in there. If you have got summaries, project
descriptions, maps, locating the different projects that have been identified. Hopefully
there is going to be a lot of valuable information in there, but -- and we have also talked
about several forms that will be added in the future. One of the key tools in allowing us
to develop the binder that you have before you is the access database. The database
and the procedures that have been put into place improve the data entry consistency
and content, because all Public Works divisions will be using the same database to
prepare their capital projects when they come to the engineering department. This has
also helped us to identify which individuals will be making the data entry. The use of the
access database will allow us the ability to search and find valuable information more
quickly. This is going to be critical in the development of KPIs that we want to have for
the future. These key performance indicators are going to be key mechanism in helping
us to identify future improvements, which we hope to make and we also hope to include
these in a dashboard presentation that will be presented to you in the future. Once the
planning phase has been completed, it's time to execute the plan. Project design is the
first stage in execution of a plan and begins with the selection of a consultant. The
process has been improved by the adoption of the new purchasing policy and by a RFQ
process which we went through earlier this year, which allowed us to develop a new
master consultants list for work over 25,000 dollars. That being said, there is still a lot
of room for improvement and we are working with the purchasing department to
accomplish that. The project management software that we discussed earlier will also
greatly aid in this process. Next step in the execution is the actual bidding of the
project. Excuse me. As one of the members of my staff put it, it used to be fast and
loose, now it's slow, but safe. Safe is a good thing. But we are working with the
purchasing department to also improve the speed at which we are able to go through
this process and still remain safe. Engineering and purchasing have been working
together to improve not only the bid documents, but the specifications, so that we can
reduce liability and insure alignment with state statutes. For some of the projects the
new purchasing policy will also help to reduce the time it takes to get from contractor
selection to an actual notice to proceed. Project -- as you can see from this list there
are a lot of steps involved in the construction of a project and it can be very challenging
for the project managers, not only to keep all of these things taken care of on one
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project, but to do this for several projects all at the same time and there is currently no
uniform or consistent process for tracking these tasks. This is one of the other reasons
that we are seeking to get some project management software for the next fiscal year.
So, it will allow us to do a better job of tracking these various tasks and keeping on top
of them. Also to address this situation, many of the project managers have been
attending project management classes at BSU and, in fact, some of them are actually
seeking certification as project managers through the program at BSU. Implementation
of a consistent and comprehensive project management process is one of the key goals
that we have in the engineering department in the future. Whether or not we get the
software that we are requesting or not, this will be one of the things that we will focus
on. We will find a way, if we have to create these -- these tools from Access or Excel or
whatever the case may be. But we are hopeful that we can find a more comprehensive
tool to do that. Project closeout. That's one of the most overlooked I think capital
project management tasks. In the consulting world where I came from, it is widely
recognized that the longer a project stays active the more the budget will creep. So, if is
also typical or easy, once we get to sort of the substantial completion stage of a project,
to turn our attention and focus in other directions. So, one of the things that we will be
trying to do, especially through the utilization of schedules and setting deadlines will be
to insure that these projects are closed out in a timely fashion and I hope that that will
help to eliminate some of the budget creep that can take place. There is one feature of
the new purchasing policy that will also affect this close out process and that is the
addition of a close-out presentation that each project manager will be required to make
to the Council and to the Mayor and I think this is a great idea, it's an opportunity for
them to not only come before you and give an accounting of the financial information on
a project, but also how the overall project went. But as you can imagine there is some
project managers who are less excited about that opportunity than others, not because
of the quality of their work, but simply because -- because coming before you guys can
be somewhat intimidating. But I do think it will be a good experience for them and it will
allow them the opportunity to explain to you the things that took place that may have
required changes. In summary, I hope that the information that I have shared with you
tonight, as well as the document that you have before you will be informative and useful
and that you will find that document to be a good tool for you. We have used the
document to prepare the enhancements that have gone to Finance that you will actually
see coming forward as part of the budge process I think in the next month. Public
Works and the engineering department have been busy making -- making changes and
creating tools to improve our capital planning process and we are committed to doing
this in the future. We realize that this is really meant that the minute you get one
process improvement in place you need to start looking for other areas and other things
that you can do to change it and we are committed to that process. I'm committed to
that process and I know my staff is committed to that process in making continual
improvement and continual changes and I think you will see that this document will
evolve as the years go forward and it will become even more useful and more valuable
and that it will allow us to do an even better job of the things that we do in providing
infrastructure for the city and with that said I will stand for your questions.
De Weerd: Thank you. Council, any questions?
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Bird: I have none.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, just a quick question. Warren, on the project management
class that they have been taking at BSU, I'm assuming that -- that they are either
reimbursed or that's part of the education process. Is it required of them to attend and
we are paying for those fees or are they paying that out of their own pocket?
Stewart: It is not required for them to attend. It is not part of the normal BSU curriculum
or course work, it's part of their -- I don't know what the actual official term is. They
have a -- basically a division that provides training for professional organizations and
this is one of their training opportunities. So, we have actually -- you know, our project
managers have signed up and paid for a training class and, then, attended that training
class. So, we have reimbursed them -- or we don't actually reimburse them, we pay for
that out of the training budget.
Hoaglun: Thank you.
De Weerd: Okay. Any other questions? Thank you very much.
Stewart: Thank you.
De Weerd: I think there is -- as you all realize this -- going to be a digestion period.
Barry: Of course. Thank you, Madam Mayor. We are not actually looking for your
formal adoption of the plan, we --
De Weerd: Well, that's good.
Barry: -- present this to you tonight just for informational purposes in advance of those
-- the budget hearings that are coming up. So, you can see kind of what we are looking
forward to over the next five year period. As you see, Mr. Stewart has his work cut out
for him and has bitten off quite a bit and we are --
De Weerd: Very impressive.
Barry: It is. And we are very, very proud of what he's done in the division and also
looking forward to many, many more great things that he's outlined for us. If you have
no further question on that topic, I'd like to introduce Rich Dees to discuss the next topic
on the back flow prevention program. Mr. Dees, as you know, has accepted the deputy
director position, so we are currently looking for a replacement for utility operations
manager, so congratulations again, Rich, on that. Rich is going to talk to you about a
seemingly straight forward topic, unfortunately, there is a lot of fingers and spines and
thorns on this particular issue and so what we have decided to do as a department is to
break it down into a couple of different presentations, tonight being the first. And what
we seek after tonight's presentation is some direction from the Council and certainly
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you, Madam Mayor, to tell us what direction initially we should, essentially, take as a
result of the presentation, because depending upon that choice will -- that will dictate
what the next presentation will look like. So, we have chunked this out into pieces, the
first one being tonight the first installment of back flow prevention and with that, Mr.
Dees, if you want to take it away for us.
Rountree: Madam Mayor, before Rich starts, could we have a few minutes break? We
have been -- our ears and our eyes have been pretty heavy for the past hour and a half,
two hours, and as an adult learner I've about had it, so I need a break.
De Weerd: Yes, we will take a break for ten minutes.
Recess: (9:29 p.m. to 9:38 p.m.)
De Weerd: Okay. We will reconvene this meeting and turn it over to you, Rich.
Dees: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, thank you very much. Are you all ready
for another couple hours? Is that what --
Rountree: Only if you want us to walk out.
Dees: Now, I know this is a gecko and, you know, we are not trying to copy a national
insurance company or anything like that, but we are the original gecko people. This is
the Tokay gecko and Tokay is a program you use to watch over back flow things, so just
to let you know. By the way, we have some staff here from the water division and they
really wanted to come up here and present to you tonight, but they said, no, no, no, you
go up and do it instead and I reluctantly am up here instead of them, so -- yeah. Right.
Meridian back flow history starts in 1981 and you can see -- I can step through this very
quickly. It was City Code Chapter -- Title 9, Chapter 3, details, responsibilities: It was
modified during a City Council session on the 3rd of May of 2005 and 2005 is when a
little bit of confusion started to creep into the program, but we instituted a rebate
program for assembly testing and repair and it's been funded through the budget
process as you have seen each year. Before -- and, in fact, it still is in the ordinance
that the customer has responsibility to get their devices tested at their expense, yet we
pay for it. So, we have an ordinance problem right away that we need sorted out and
that's going to be one of the things we are going to talk to you about. Now, back flow
conditions. Just a real quick education and back flow. There are three major conditions
for back flow. One is called back syphonage and you can appreciate what this is. You
could take a garden hose and throw it in a puddle of water and, then, turn the water --
start to turn it down, it will actually siphon back into the water supply. Back pressure
back flow is when one pressure side is higher than the other. For example, pressure
irrigation is higher than the supply that we are giving the homeowner and it goes back
into the system. And across-connection there is another problem for back flow. Our
dilemma is that we have a problem with dual connected systems and this is what we are
going to ask you to talk to us about or help us with this evening. Several systems were
grandfathered in years ago, because they existed prior to the addition of pressurized
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irrigation. Well, I will tell you what a dual connection system is in just a second. We
don't know the location of all these dual connected systems, but we know they are out
there. We are not now reimbursing the testing for the systems, because it's against our
ordinance to do so. Our ordinance says you cannot have a dual connected system.
And it might be difficult -- and this is one of the big dilemmas, to allow -- disallow dual
connected systems, because we have installed meters in our history to allow the
sprinklers to come on using a dual connected system. So, we have got kind of a
convoluted thing going on in our community. Here is the ordinance. I would be -- we
don't have to read the entire ordinance. It's written by a lawyer, oddly enough. Sorry.
At least one lawyer. It says that no subdivision building or lot or parcel of land located
within that subdivision -- which subdivision building lot or parcel of land has a common
landscape sprinkler irrigation system being supplied landscape irrigation water from a
source other than the city domestic water system, shall be allowed to also connect its
landscape sprinkler system to the city domestic water system as a secondary source of
the shoulder season. What that really means is that we disallow the customers to hook
up not only to pressurized irrigation, but also to our domestic water supply. The part
that we are having a little trouble with, which we will emphasize later on, it says it may
be allowed one joint use system per community. And that word may is what seems to
be causing all the problems. This joined use connection should only be used to provide
irrigation water during the time when the common landscape irrigation system has no
supply of water, like when the irrigation runs out, they use domestic water to water their
lawns. Here is a real quick education. This is allowed. This shows you a single point
connection where the sprinklers are run by a pressurized irrigation system. You see the
WW down at the bottom is the water meter, which goes to the home and the domestic
water lines on the bottom. The pressurized water line also goes up to the community
meter, as you can see, and whenever the pressurized irrigation drops off, the sprinkler
system can be served with water from our system when the homeowners association
allows it. So, we allow this -- this single point connection here. Here is another one.
This is also allowed. This is simply with no pressurized irrigation. This is just like my
neighborhood. I don't have pressurized irrigation. So, I have a water meter that comes
to my house and I have a pressure vacuum breaker that goes and serves my sprinkler
system. The third type is not allowed. This is where we have across-connection. You
can see where the pressurized irrigation is crossed with the water coming in from the
water meter. This is a direct connection from pressurized irrigation to our system.
There is no protection at all. In fact, there is no pressure vacuum breaker, there is
nothing, it's just a flat cross-connection. Here is also a thing that's not allowed. There is
a back flow prevention device between the pressurized irrigation system and our
domestic water line. However, it's not a common pressurized irrigation system, this is
an individual one. This is a homeowner or just an individual plot someplace. This is
what's specifically not allowed in our ordinance. Although engineering-wise and
technically this will work, as long as that RP device is okay. This is also not allowed.
Here is where the customer has an RP device that he wants water in the shoulder
season and his homeowner association may shut off the big water supply that supplies
the pressurized irrigation, so there is two RP devices involved, except the homeowners
association controls that one on the top left and so it prevents the irrigation company, if
you will, from providing domestic water to the irrigation lines, so the homeowner says,
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well, I still want to water my lawn, so I'll put an RP in to water my lawn from our
domestic water. This is what can happen when an irrigation system goes a little bit
crazy. This actually happened almost a year ago today. It was in Eagle. It was a boil
water advisory in effect for an Eagle subdivision. It had happened that -- well, tell you
what happened on June 12th. What happened was is somebody installed an RP device
backwards and contaminated about a hundred homes and one of the things that
exacerbated the problem was is there was a pressure difference between the
pressurized irrigation system and the domestic water supplies. The pressurized
irrigation system actually fed the domestic supply. That's something we would really not
like to happen. This is what some of the other communities are doing about cross-
connections and dual connections. First of all, Kuna water allows it. They say, yes, you
can do it as long as you have got an approved back flow assembly installed. Nampa
water does not allow it. It says no matter what -- they are like us, they say no matter
what you can't do it. United Water does allow it. This is sort of a sampling throughout
the different communities. There is some reasons to allow for dual connections. First of
all, it gives customers the option of good customer service. If a customer wants to
water his lawn during the shoulder season, he can do it whenever he wants to with a
dual connected system. He simply turns the water on and when the irrigation system
goes off and switches a few valves and away you go. It does provide us with additional
revenue. We are certainly selling water whenever they are using our water and those
fees could be charged to the customer -- you know, those fees we could collect and
increase our revenues somewhat. It's -- this is an older version of the slide show. How
did we do that? Anyway, we have allowed it in the past. What that means is that it has
been allowed in the past, because of the -- of the folks who were there grandfathered in,
so they allowed -- we allowed that to happen in the past. So, there are people out there
that have these dual connected systems. Other agencies in the valley allow for dual
connections and it does allow for a standard approach to all customers. It does
increase customer satisfaction. We have had a lot of requests for dual connect systems
and we have denied them thus far. Here is the cons for allowing dual connections.
Increased risk for contamination of potable water system. The more dual connections
you have, the more opportunity we have to contaminate our water supply. It's an
increased work load and cause for cracking the back flow devices. That Tokay software
that I mentioned earlier is a software that tracks everybody's back flow device in the city.
Well, if you add another, you know, four or five hundred, that's four or five hundred more
we have got to monitor. In times of severe drought or disaster like it says, this -- this
dual connection is sort of -- reduces our ability to control wasteful water usage,
domestic supplies, and so it does -- conservation is by default restricted if the dual
connection system remains. Certainly does increase our enforcement efforts if we had
a dual connection system. This is a challenge with our current ordinance. This is one
of the things we are going to ask you to -- if we can change. That little section there
where it says it may be allowed one joint use for point of connection, people are
interpreting that word may to mean, okay, we can do it. We may be allowed to do it.
So, allow us to connect it dually, why are you on our backs. Get off our backs and let us
do it. Here is our recommended change. Just a few words. The same ordinance, it
says will be allowed only one joint use point of connection, instead of several. It really
defines it. There can be only one and that's if it's a joint use connection. These are our
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recommendations that we'd like you to consider this evening. We would not like you to
consider using dual connection, except as specified in the ordinance. We would like
you to modify the ordinance to allow only one common dual connection in a
neighborhood. Certainly we would like to continue to enforce all city ordinances related
to back flow with recommended modifications. That is generating about a hundred
extra turn offs a month, by the way, for that -- just for that action. We'd like to continue
to send out our annual testing reminder notices on approved systems. We do that on
every system that we know about, we send out a reminder notice saying it's time to get
your back flow preventer tested. These are the next steps that we'd like to initiate. First
of all, bring the modified ordinance back to you for approval and, then, begin discussion
on the other considerations related to the back flow prevention program and these are
the other considerations. This is where part two sort of gets involved. We have to have
part one in place before we can go to do part two and three, if there is a part three.
Back flow testing repair, reimbursement program needs to be looked at hard -- very very
hard. We are spending quite a bit of money to repair and test back flow systems in our
communities. Our fee collection process is not real clear. We'd like to tighten that up.
We want to make sure we are collecting fees for illegal connections and illegal taps.
We may have to consider staffing changes if we change our procedures in the back flow
system, because right now one person is monitoring several thousand devices in our
system. We are having some issues with the customer -- with testers who are providing
services to our customers. We don't test the systems, we provide them a list. We
provide our customers a list of people who are certified testers to go out and examine
their systems. We had a meeting with all those folks at the first of the year. We brought
them into the room and said these are our expectations. That said, they are still out
there trying to drum up business. Obviously, they are -- one person wants to get more
than the other and so there is a lot of competition there for that service, so we want to
streamline that process a little bit. Those are what we'd like you to consider this
evening. First of all, just allow us to change that ordinance to tighten it up, so that we
do not allow dual connections, except for the joint system on a community and once
that's in place, then, we can talk about these other considerations at a future meeting.
I'll answer any questions you have.
De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, quick -- Rich, I'm trying to think of a system -- a community
system where their pressurized irrigation through the domestic water supply, the water
we provide, but at the same time if there are wells on the property that they use, is
that --
Dees: Common problem.
Hoaglun: Okay.
Dees: It's also not allowed. Excuse me. The same problem can exist. We don't know
what the domestic -- their well can do. Maybe it's ashallow -- we don't have a clue if it's
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tested or not tested, good or bad or indifferent. So, it's the same problem. It is not
allowed.
Hoaglun: Okay. But do we know what the extent of that is out there --
Dees: We know there is a few. We don't know how many, but we know there is a few.
We have one particular individual I think came before you asking to have that very thing
done just not too long ago.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Rountree: On the one joint connection, who is responsible on the city side of that meter
to provide the right size delivery pipe, so it can serve whatever size that joint community
might be? Is that something the city would have to take on or is that something that the
developer or the neighborhood would take on?
Dees: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Rountree, that's something
the developer would put in place. In other words, he would say, you know what, I need
a four inch line to serve this -- this community and that's what we put in. We wouldn't
put that in, but they would -- they will have to size it for whatever they are going to
provide.
Rountree: And they would put it in?
Dees: Yes, sir.
Rountree: And we would meter it accordingly?
Dees: Yes, sir.
Rountree: Okay.
Dees: But they will buy the meter when it's put in and that's part of the charge.
Rountree: Yeah. Yeah.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: On the grandfathered ones, do we know where they are or were they just
allowed and nobody made a record of them?
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Dees: They were just allowed and nobody made a record. We are sleuthing them out
slowly, very slowly, as time goes on, but it takes time. We don't know where they all
are. Our guys are getting pretty good at it, though. They can spot them pretty well. In
fact, they have spotted at lot of them here just recently, especially when sprinklers first
turn on you can spot which ones are which and it's -- how they do it I'm not real sure,
but we are sleuthing them out. There is quite a few out there. We have a divining rod.
Yeah, those work.
Rountree: I know a guy who can help you witch them if you want. Question on the
back flow testing and repair. I understood that we paid for the testing. I did not
understand that we paid for the repairs. Do we pay for all repairs?
Dees: No. We pay up to a certain amount. It depends on the size of the service.
think mine is 50 bucks. Ihave afive-eights inch or three-quarter, five-eights inch
service, that's 50 dollars at a maximum allowed for both testing and repair. If I have any
repairs I need on my back flow preventer, that 50 bucks has to cover not only testing,
but to repair that. If there is more than that, then, it might be --
Rountree: Okay.
De Weerd: Anything further, Council?
Dees: We are just looking to make sure that you're okay with us changing that
ordinance to allow one single connection.
Rountree: Madam Mayor, I guess from what Rich says and what's going on around us,
don't -- I don't like it, but I think it's consistent with what the market's providing, so
would say, yeah, clear up the may to when it can happen and how it's going to happen.
That's me. I don't know about the rest of --
Bird: I don't disagree.
Hoaglun: I feel the same way.
Rountree: And I agree with these other considerations. I think we need to talk about
how much we going to spend and if there is violations, what kind of fees can we collect.
Dees: Indeed.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I would also consider is -- just back on the grandfathered systems, they have
been operating that way for quite awhile. Can we now put a deadline on them.
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Dees: We feel we can and that's going to be one of the things we will bring back to you.
We will send letters out to those we know about and say you have got maybe a month
of 30 days, 45 days, whatever, to put in a preventer or cut -- sever the line. Sever the
connection, one of the two. And that's one of the considerations we will bring back to
you and I agree, we can -- I think we can. I think we can. I think we can tell them, no,
it's time, we made the choice not to allow you to do that anymore and now you have to
change.
Zaremba: Call it a grace period. There has been a long grace period
Dees: It's been a long grace period for some.
De Weerd: Well, thank you, Rich.
Dees: Thank you.
De Weerd: Tom, anything you want to add?
Barry: No, Madam Mayor, other than to say it will be a bit of a different transition to now
go back to some of the community members who have been grandfathered and inform
them that they have to, on their expense, transition their system to meet our ordinance.
Particularly since we have, in some cases, as I'm informed, allowed in the past those
connections and enabled them by placing meters -- separate on those connections. So,
we -- just so the Council understands, we will be going back under this direction to
remove those meters and that that may create some discord with some in our
community, so --
Rountree: We are not there yet.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor and Tom, what we are looking at in our ordinance and going
through that process -- so, this -- this irrigation season will probably be ended before all
of this gets completed, I would assume, so --
Barry: That could certainly be -- you know, we could work on a timeline that the Council
describes for us in which we could not implement these changes until a date certain,
which is after the irrigation system and, thus, giving people, you know, essentially, a six
month period to come into compliance. So, we could certainly work around that, unless
Council wants to see this done more urgently.
Hoaglun: Thank you.
Barry: Okay. Thank you.
F. Mayor's Office: City Scholarship Program Update
De Weerd: Thank you. Okay. Item F was vacated.
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G. Clerks Office: Approval of New Beer and Wine License
Application for The Griddle Located at 2310 E. Overland Rd.
#132, Pending Meridian Fire Department Approval
De Weerd: Item 6-G.
Holman: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, this is another one of the beer and
wine license applications that we didn't want to have to have it wait for two more weeks,
since we don't have a third meeting. So, instead of putting it on the Consent Agenda,
we actually put this on the regular agenda, so we could possibly request, I guess, a
motion that has some conditions in it and Chief Niemeyer has actually more information
on what they are waiting for with this location.
Niemeyer: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, this is a -- the Griddle at 2310 East
Overland Road. Chief Silva went out to do an inspection of the facility. There is three
issues that we have at this facility. I think we can get those done if you make a motion
to grant with approval with these conditions. At issue is at the rear of the facility there is
a secondary egress exit. They have since put a wall up, creating a hallway, and behind
that wall is the exit, so you cannot see the exit sign, cannot see the door and so what
we are asking them to do is move the exit sign to where it is visible from all patrons
within the business there. Also, that door does not have any panic hardware, which is a
code requirement, so that if we do have a fire in that building people don't have to
stumble for a door knob, they hit the panic hardware. So, the three conditions would be
to post the suite number on the rear door, so we can identify the address on the back
side of the building. Move the exhibit sign on the east wall to provide a visual and also
provide panic hardware on the east exit door. Chief Silva does have afollow-up
inspection with the occupant owners. So, those would be the three conditions that we
could request.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Mark, what is the time limit on the re-inspection?
Niemeyer: When I talked to Joe today he said about two weeks. This is something that
the business owner calls us back to arrange that re-inspection once they have
completed the three things. He believes we can do that within the next two weeks.
Bird: And when is the liquor license?
Holman: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Bird, the liquor license --
everything is ready to go on it, except for your approval and those three conditions, so I
didn't realize that it might be two weeks out.
Niemeyer: I think that's the max that --
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Holman: The max?
Niemeyer: -- Joe gave me when I talked to him about this.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
Bird: Wouldn't -- yeah. Go ahead.
Rountree: I guess I have a little problem that we are holding a beer and wine license
over somebody's head that's a violation of code. If they are in violation of building code
and fire code and fire safety, we ought to see some kind of a fine or a ticket, not hold up
an application for some other function, but I guess that's just me. We have got enough
leverage other places, why are we doing it with the beer and wine license?
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Bird: You took the words out of my mouth, Charlie. But, I'll tell you what, I can't believe
we know a code violation like that, life safety code violation in a restaurant, where you
have got gas utility, chances of fire more than the average retail outlet, and we don't put
a violation on it? I'm like Charlie, why are we holding the wine and beer license over
their head? This is a code violation, it's nothing less than that. We shouldn't have to
hold a beer and wine license over their head. Let's get it taken care of.
Nary: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Nary.
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, the clerk's office, legal, the various
departments came to you about two years ago on this very issue that we find
occupancy issues when we inspect for these purposes, we find code compliance
issues, and so we got directions from the Council a couple years ago saying we are not
going to issue these until they come into compliance, so that we can make sure they get
done. Obviously, you all know a beer and wine or a liquor license is of great value to
the businesses and we could cite them and go through that process and go to court and
spend a few months, but they are also, then, going to be serving alcohol at the same
location and there is some time. This is much more of an immediate impact. So, I
understand it seems like a disconnect, but many times -- and I don't know that in this
particular instance -- my assumption is this particular instance it wasn't discovered
because of the beer and wine application, it may have been discovered on a routine
inspection that the change had occurred, but this was the direction you folks gave us a
couple years ago, to make sure they are in compliance with all conditions of the city
before we would issue them a license.
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Bird: But -- Madam Mayor? Bill, I agree with you a hundred percent and nothing in my
opinion's wrong with this, but, let me tell you something, we have got -- we have got
three -- two people and engine companies out inspecting. Now, let me tell you
something -- and it's supposed to be done on a yearly basis. I know -- I know we had
never -- we were way behind and now I think we have got them all and maybe we can
get around to it. But this is such a code violation that it isn't even -- I mean it's horrible.
don't care -- the beer and wine license don't mean a thing to me. If they have a fire in
there, they got a wall built in the exit door and, like you said, it don't have a panic on it
and you're in smoke and stuff, do you think you're going to find it? Absolutely not. In
massive fires the most deaths are found at the doors. I could give them the license, but
let's put a time limit on the code and close them down on -- close their business down.
That will do more than no beer or wine license.
Niemeyer: Madam Mayor, Councilman Bird, we do do that. We are out doing
inspections annually now. I do believe we are completely caught up on the business.
So, when we find these violations we do give them notice that it needs to be fixed and,
then, we set a reschedule to come back and make sure that that does get fixed, so we
are out doing that today.
Bird: Madam Mayor, can I --
De Weerd: Yes.
Bird: Bill, is there a legal limit how long we have to give them on something severe like
this?
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I mean I think the intent of the fire
department and the fire marshal -- I mean we have discussed it, I mean in trying to
allow businesses reasonable time periods, because of -- we get to that. I mean a
couple of weeks -- I understand you're saying perfectly clear, but I think I'd have to trust
the fire marshal to be comfortable that there is still enough evacuation opportunity there
that one door that's defective is not significant enough to close the business. So, again,
understand the disconnect you're feeling about the license, but, again, many times the
license is the greatest motivator these people have and shutting them down isn't
necessarily -- I mean that's certainly going to be a greater motivator than anything else
and we have certainly done that in circumstances where we felt like safety was
compromised, we have shut the power off of facilities because of that and this particular
one I never had a discussion with Deputy Chief Silva, so I don't know, but my
assumption is that he felt there was enough of a risk to make them comply, but not
enough of a risk to make them close down. But, again, we were under the direction that
we are not going to issue anything for folks until they get to compliance, whether it's
CO's or whatever.
Bird: I remember when that was done. Madam Mayor'?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
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Bird: If we are done with discussion, I move we approve the beer and wine license for
the Griddle and make sure that within two weeks the violations of life safety is taken
care of. If not, a violation be filed.
Holman: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, may I ask a question?
De Weerd: Not unless I have a second.
Hoaglun: Second.
De Weerd: Okay. Now discussion. Thank you.
Holman: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Bird, am to give them
the license tomorrow or do we hold --
Bird: As far as I'm concerned give them the license.
Holman: Okay.
Bird: Just make sure they come within two weeks. That's my opinion.
Nary: We have no means to revoke it if they don't. We can only cite them for the fire
violations, but we can't revoke that license and that's the reason why we have held
them.
Bird: I'll tell you what, in Idaho State Code you can close them if they are life safety.
can tell you that's the only exit they have got in there. I have been in that place too
many times.
Nary: And, like I said, Councilman Bird, that was the only reason why we have held
these, is because we don't have any means to revoke this license under our code
currently if they don't comply. We can cite them, but we can't revoke it. If that's your
direction, that's fine. I just want to be sure that's clear.
Hoaglun: Question, Madam Mayor, to the maker of the motion. Then, what I heard
your motion was that to approve the new beer and wine license to the Griddle pending
the approval of fire department, they have got to get those three things done before they
receive that beer and wine license.
Bird: Well, yeah, that will be fine with me. Let's just get the thing -- violation taken care
of. And you're probably right, Bill. We don't have nothing to hammer them with if we
don't keep it.
De Weerd: Okay. So, we have clarity on that motion?
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Zaremba: One more clarification.
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: The clerk would hold the license and not hand it to them until the fire chief
says it's okay; is that correct?
Bird: That's fine.
Holman: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Zaremba, when we have
done this in the past, what I have done is I have gotten the Mayor's signature tonight
and, then, I hold the license without my signature or city stamp on it until fire would
notify us that those three violations are done, they are in compliance, and, then, I sign
and we release.
Zaremba: If that's the intent of the motion I'm with it.
De Weerd: Okay. Any further discussion? Madam Clerk, will you, please, call roll.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carries.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
H. Planning Department: Rails with Trails
De Weerd: Okay. Next item is Item H.
Ellsworth: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, on this agenda item I am here
before you to provide a brief update on a project that staff has been working on and for
this agenda item by staff I'm now referring totally to the planning, but there is an inter-
departmental working group comprised of representatives from the Parks and
Recreation Department, Public Works, Planning Department, as well as the Mayor's
office, to take alook amulti-use pathway paralleling the railroad tracks. As you may
recall, this has been contemplated for quite awhile in the city's Comprehensive Plan, it
was also incorporated into the pathways master plan that the city originally adopted
back in 2007. This segment of pathway is somewhat unique as to compared to some of
the other ones that the city has around town in two very important ways. The first of
which is that a very limited potential for this pathway to be implemented through the
development process as was fairly common around town when development occurs.
The other unique quality of this project is that there is a difference stake holder involved
and that is Union Pacific. So, when the city initially approached them set up dialogue,
give or take a year ago, Union Pacific's response was what you put in front of us so far
isn't quite enough for us to actually give you a response. Why don't you go back, collect
some more information, tell us exactly what you're trying to do, and, then, come back
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and that way we can engage in that dialogue. So, to that end the city has moved
forward in developing information on materials. Huge hats off to Tim over in Public
Works, he's been working extremely hard through this working group on a PowerPoint
presentation that basically can orient folks about the project, what it seeks to achieve,
so on and so forth. The city also retained the services of Alta Planning and Design, you
may remember from .the master pathways plan, to prepare, essentially, a concept plan
analysis and refined alignment study for this -- this proposed project and it has identified
central constrained areas and goes into greater level of detail than just one line on a
map at 30,000 feet. The study in fatal flaws analysis concluded several things, two of
which were, one, there is more than enough room in most locations -- this is a wide
corridor and it looks from -- from their expert view, like this should be a viable project,
essentially. Number two -- and this comes back to the fatal flaws component of it, is
that inter-jurisdictional buy-in may be a challenge, so you can read between the lines
there, there is a high level of communications that still has to go on and there is one
time a stake holder that they might be a little bit new at this sort of thing, so we need to
work hard to bring them on board. The city further has commissioned the same
consultants to prepare corridor renderings in order to help tell the story both to that --
that primary stake holder, as well as other potential partners. So, just some examples.
You can see the amount of lift in between the railroad tracks off to the right of the
screen there and the fence that's to the right of the proposed pathway. Two more
concept drawings, again, the cross-section here spells it out again fairly clearly on the
typical cross-section exactly how much width we are talking about. Again, this is just
the northern half of the right of way that's pictured here. So, again, the purpose of the
presentation tonight is to introduce you to this project, to make you aware of staffs
efforts to date and seek Council's permission to continue moving this project forward.
So, with that I welcome your questions and comments.
De Weerd: Thank you, Matt. Any questions from Council?
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Bird.
Bird: Matt, what kind of investment are we looking at to move forward with it?
Ellsworth: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Bird, as part of the fatal
flaws analysis I do recall a refined cost estimate. I don't have the numbers right here in
front of me, so that that's something that I can follow back up with you --
Bird: No problem.
Ellsworth: -- if you guys want.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor? The line out here is being leased by another entity from
Union Pacific? Do they enter into the equation at all, the lessee, or is it just Union
Pacific that we have to deal with?
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De Weerd: We would be dealing primarily with Union Pacific. They have made it clear
that it would be their decision, but certainly we would want to bring Watco or Treasure
Valley Railroad into the discussion as a stake holder, certainly, and someone that we
hope to work closely with.
Bird: Yeah.
Hoaglun: Thank you.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Are we discussing with neighboring jurisdictions that this might be a
continuing path that goes beyond the borders of Meridian? I mean it sounds to me like
this is something we could all do together and --
De Weerd: Part of the strategy is to work with the potential stake holders and others that
have an interest through compass and our neighboring cities to gain the political support
and show broad interest and support for this project.
Zaremba: That would be cool.
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Madam Mayor. First observation is that the renderings opposite the path,
which would be on the other side of the right of way are not near weedy enough.
Second observation is that I don't see anything and I have not heard anything about --
orseen across-section or typical section of what the pathway and intersections with the
major corridors that it crosses looks like and how that would be handled. Nor have I
heard any discussion or seen anything of how rail spurs that currently exist and those
may come in the future would be handled. To me those are pretty significant fatal flaws,
if you will, particularly from a safety standpoint.
Ellsworth: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Rountree, I can't speak
to the issue of rail spurs. I can say that in Meridian pathways master plan there is a
discussion of roadway crossings, there is a very high level analysis of what traffic
volumes would need to be to constitute different source treatments. Again, falling back
on the expert, Tim Kerns has indicated that he's going to push really, really hard for
some sort of a dedicated crossing to Eagle Road. He said that point blank unsafe. But
I think as far as the strategy is concerned, the thought was to engage the primary stake
holder in a dialogue to see if it's worth coordinating with ACHD and to allow that -- you
know, some of those design questions be answered further along in the process.
Rountree: Thank you.
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De Weerd: Councilman Rountree, there was a very detailed analysis of the corridor
identifying where the bottlenecks -- certainly the huge challenges might be. There has
been some initial contact with various stake holders in terms of Ada County Highway
District, the irrigation district -- again, it's all on initial comments, nothing in depth at this
point. But, again, we wanted to get this in front of you first to make sure that we are all
on the same page as we would, then, move forward on next steps.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I got a dumb question. What's the 16 inch sewer line doing in there?
Hoaglun: That wasn't so dumb, Councilor. I was going to ask the same question.
De Weerd: I think that's re-use water line.
Barry: Mr. Bird that is a rendering that shows the potential for reclaimed water line in
that corridor. We figured if we were going to enter into conversation with Watco or UP,
that we'd try to test what sort of limits that easement restriction might have and one of
the thoughts there also was that if we ended up being able to viably locate the
reclaimed water facility, the contributions for the improvements to that pathway section
would be in partnership with the Enterprise Fund.
Bird: Well, that isn't sewer line, though. You're not putting sewer down there.
Barry: But reclaimed water would be --
Bird: Well, I know it comes out in sewer line, but --
Barry: Right. It's still in the Enterprise Fund, because it's still part of the wastewater
utility, so --
Bird: Okay. Thank you.
De Weerd: And kind of for the same purpose of the pathway. This is a pristine corridor
that connects for seven miles and what a great opportunity not to move people, but
infrastructure that can open up new services to our citizens.
Bird: Twenty years ago that path was pretty good pheasant hunting between here and
Nampa.
Rountree: It still is.
Bird: It still is, but --
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De Weerd: It's legal. I guess it's not annexed, so it is legal, although no one would like
it done behind their fence.
Rountree: So, are you looking for direction on --
De Weerd: Yes.
Rountree: I think moving forward is the right thing to do. Make sure we look at the fatal
flaws and put a finer point on some of what it's going to cost to overcome them.
De Weerd: Yeah. And I think at the first place is to make sure Union Pacific is
agreeable to continue discussion, because, then, that could kill it immediate and so we
want to make sure we are ready to move forward if they are.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I don't know whether Union Pacific -- whether it's a question of desire or not,
but I believe there are such pathways other places that this would not be their first
request, so it is -- whatever obstacle they throw up, somebody must have overcome
them at some point.
De Weerd: I think they will look at throwing up obstacles and we are trying to anticipate
what they might be, have ready answers and examples to share with them, so they are
more favorable to our request. Okay. With that said, we will start rolling this forward.
Thank you.
Barry: Thank you.
Planning Department: City Energy Plan Update
De Weerd: Thank you, Matt. Okay. Pete, City Energy Plan update.
Friedman: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Council Members. In front of you, you have the
hard copies of our energy efficiency and conservation strategy and, as you know, this
was funded through our energy efficiency conservation block grant. This energy
efficiency conservation strategy identifies 31 actions for the city to undertake over a ten
year period. Some of those can be considered in future budgets. However, seven of
them are the projects that are being funded through the grant and are about ready to
kick off. Steve mentioned earlier the Fothergil pathway that is under design and has
since putting together a big report July. The second one we will be undertaking is the
installation of the -- at least the procurement of the turbo blowers for the wastewater
treatment plant and I understand that we will probably be able to step that out and have
that move forward at least towards the purchase within about six to eight weeks or at
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least get the procurement process started on that. Following that we will probably be
looking at the switch out of the light switches and motion sensors for the fire stations
and replacement of the lightening at the wastewater treatment plant, maybe by fall
getting them onto that and, then, we will be moving onto the police department re-
commissioning and, then, ultimately finishing up with the street light LED replacement
and, then, finally, the design of Five Mile pathway between Ten Mile and Linder. So,
this, as I say, lays out some more immediate projects and, then, kind of highlights in a
very general manner the remaining 24 actions. Some could be accomplished by in-
house staff, others would be brought to Council over the next few years with budgets
and so forth and we also will be folding parts of this into the Comprehensive Plan. I
imagine this will be a living document that no doubt will probably evolve and mature as
time goes on and some of our energy challenges face us in the future. So, it's our first
step in pulling together a complete strategy for the city and be energy efficiency.
De Weerd: Well, I guess, Pete, what I would like to see and I believe that. Warren
mentioned it earlier in his comments about capital improvement plans and street lighting
straight, I do think we need to take a look at this, work with capital improvement plans of
both -- both the General Fund and Enterprise Fund where appropriate and, again, make
sure that these are captured and that it is constrained as well.
Friedman: Madam Mayor, Council Members, as you know, one of the projects will be
the demonstration project, replacing those existing street lamp elements with the LEDs
from I-84 up to Fairview along Main Street. So, that will be our demonstration project.
And, then, in my discussions with Public Works staff, I think what -- one of the things we
will be doing is in terms of looking at their development standards to incorporate higher
efficiency light elements into the Public Works standards for street lighting. So, that's
yet another one of the actions in here and, then, again, coordinating with Public Works
in trying to get those -- there is two different types, there is LED and there is another
type of elements that they have been looking at incorporated in the streetlights.
De Weerd: Okay.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: This is kind of a side thing, but somewhere I read about streetlight fixtures
that actually have solar collecting, I guess I'd say or power generating ability. Of
course, with solar, unless you have batteries it doesn't -- doesn't help you to collect
solar during the day and run a light at night, but they do use them -- they are not
necessarily self sustaining and not connected to the grid, what they are is they are
connected to the grid and during the day they put more energy into the grid, so that,
essentially, you're selling -- selling electricity to the power company and, then, at night
the light uses energy out of the grid at a much cheaper time and t don't know whether
that pencils out or not, but it sounded like an intriguing concept to me.
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Friedman: Madam Mayor, Council Zaremba, Council, I haven't heard of that one, but
one of our local companies -- in fact, the Mayor and I met with one of their
representatives anumber of months ago, actually has developed a streetlight that is
totally solar generated, they were actually able to place those kinds of lights in areas
that are off the grid and I don't know the engineering behind it, but that's one of the
products that they are developing and, again, working with Public Works if there is
areas, you know, where we have challenges with lighting and so forth, certainly it's one
of -- one avenue worth exploring. There is a lot of interesting things coming out in the
whole realm of solar and power generation and net metering and all of that.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: We have seen this in bits and pieces and it appears to be a well pulled
together document. I would like some time to go through it. I believe this would be
used for the application or part of the application process, correct, for the grant?
Friedman: Madam Mayor, Council Member Rountree, Council, that's true. This is the --
we are now in the implementation stage, actually. We have been awarded the balance
of our grant funds, so now I'm working with each one of the respective departments and
purchasing to move forward on implementing those seven projects that were identified
within here.
Rountree: My question is should the city not just silently adopt this, but, actually,
endorse it by motion and have it signed -- have a cover letter and sign it? What's
appropriate?
Friedman: Madam Mayor, yeah, if it's the Council's preference to adopt this as the city's
energy conservation strategy you can do that. Sign it. We would transmit it to DOE.
Parts of it already have been. The long range aspect of it was sort of a value added
element of it. The seven projects that are in -- as I call it the short-term strategy, have
been transmitted to DOE and by the award of the balance of the grant they have, by de
facto accepted, but I certainly would be able to transmit this to them and say here is our
strategy that was a result of the funding that we did receive. So, that's a great idea.
De Weerd: Okay. If you would like to us to bring that back --
Nary: Madam Mayor? Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, we could bring a
resolution on the 22nd for the Council to approve and that would be a part of the
attachment that Mr. Friedman could set.
Rountree: Is that timely enough? Yeah. I think that would be good and give us time to
look through it and I guess if there are comments or concerns, to get back to you soon,
so maybe we can get some corrections or addendums or -- if we do put any cover letter
we can make some clarifications as need be.
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Friedman: That's fine. I would be happy to work on anything you send my way. As you
have indicated, you have seen this in a couple of iterations before.
Rountree: Different iterations, yeah.
Friedman: Yeah.
De Weerd: Okay. We will bring it back on the 22nd, then.
Rountree: Thank you.
J. Public Works: Budget Reallocation for Well 28 Pumping
Facilities Construction for aNot-to-Exceed Amount of
$180,000.00
K. Public Works: Budget Amendment for Sewer Line
Replacements for aNot-to-Exceed Amount of $125,000.00
De Weerd: Thank you. Okay. Item 6-J, Public Works -- J and K. If you're presenting
these -- two different people or you can present them all at once.
Dolsby: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, we have two separate budget
amendments that I will talk about together. They are both taking advantage of a
savings that we had in the land acquisition for the ground reservoir when we acquired
the land a few months ago. We acquired it at a much lower price than we had originally
anticipated, so we had some savings that we have already utilized for a budget
amendment that was presented in April, but we wanted to further utilize the funds for
these two opportunities. First is for a Well 28 pumping facility. We are requesting an
180,000 dollar budget amendment. This amendment will help to fund to drill the well
deeper. We wanted to drill the well deeper to explore opportunities, find better water,
down on a deeper well and just to find out more about the system and to research
several different opportunities associated with the well and also we request to put in an
on site hypochloric generation system and replace the chlorine storage, which has a
higher initial capital cost, but over the life cycle of the well it will save upwards of
300,000 dollars that we would spend in chlorine storage cost. This second budget
amendment is for 125,000 transfer from the ground reservoir to sewer line
replacements, which will be used for deteriorated sewer lines in the system to repair or
replace those lines that have been identified through our collection system trust that we
acquired last year. And with that I will stand for any questions.
De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Bird: I have none.
De Weerd: Okay.
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Zaremba: Do we need a motion?
De Weerd: Yes, we do.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I move that we approve the budget reallocation of Item J and the budget
amendment of Item K.
Rountree: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Madam Clerk, will you call
roll.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 7: Community Items/Presentations
A. Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Activity
Prioritization: Discussion of Activities for Use of PY2010
CDBG Funds Anticipated at $274,368.00
De Weerd: Okay. Item 7 is our Community Items on our CDBG.
Ellsworth: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. I'm going to fast forward the
presentation here to the current agenda item. Yeah. Thank you. So, we are -- we are
initiating a process to prepare next year's CDBG action plan. As you will recall, the
action plan is a requirement of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in
order to secure that annual entitlement. HUD has allocated those funds in the amount
of 274,368 dollars to Meridian for the next program year, which begins on October 1st.
So, I'm before you this evening seeking Council's take on the priority activities to include
in that plan. A brief program overview. The program tends to adopt community
development needs, of course. It's to develop viable urban communities, provide
decent, safe and suitable housing and the high level national objectives are to benefit
persons of low, moderate income, to address urban blight, and to meet urgent need.
That urgent need category is one of the national objectives, it's not something that's
generally applicable here due to the interpretation of it. But other considerations in
addition to Council's input this evening that are going to feed into the action plan draft
activities that are identified for next year. HUD does mandate a minimum of 70 percent
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June 8, 2010
Page 76 of 85
expenditure on those LMI activities. The primary focus of this program is to be on
residential low and moderate income, so that's -- that's the way that they -- that they
address that requirement. There is some additional funding caps, 20 percent of the
annual allocation can go towards planning and administration. Public services, which
as you will recall, include the Food Bank this year, included some assistance to the
Boys and Girls Club that is capped out at 15 percent. Aside note is that those public
service activities can also benefit low moderate income populations, those are not
mutually exclusive. It can be a little bit -- a little bit confusing until you really dive in and
take a look at it. One of the factors at play coming up, especially next program year is
the update of the city's consolidated plan and the consolidated plan is a longer range
general direction setting document, it's also required by the Department of Housing and
Urban Development. It has a five year time span to it. The city's initial consolidated
plan was approved by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2008, it
covers program years 2007 through 2011, looking down the road and also looking to fill
some holes in our existing plan, we are going to initiate the update to that plan
beginning next year. But where I am going with this is it's a rather larger undertaking,
there is a lot of different pieces to that puzzle and staff is going to be awfully busy
updating that plan and making sure that the city can continue to receive those fundings
into the future. So, as it applies to next year's action plan, unless staff receives direction
otherwise this evening, staff feels that it's probably most appropriate to try to limit the
overall number of activities in order to decrease the administrative leg work. What we
are finding as we really get into these projects is that in a lot case in a lot of ways there
is the same amount of leg work that goes into a two to three thousand dollar project as
there is that goes into a 200,000 project. So, we could really allow staff to focus on that
consolidated plan update by picking a couple of top priorities, going in that direction,
and wrapping up the plan in that manner. So, the activity ideas that I will get to here in
just a ,second were generated from several different sources. I contacted the city
department directors on May 3rd to get their take and request their assistance in
identifying potential uses of funds. I also reached out past recipients and other
interested organizations that have approached me about the program. Again, those
contacted earlier last month per our citizen participation plan. The city also held apre-
draft public meeting on May 26th, 2010, it was advertised in the Valley Times. E-mailed
-- it was advertised over a-mail and for a change we actually had a turn out at that
meeting, which was encouraging, it wasn't just me hanging out by myself and waiting for
something to happen, so it was kind of nice. In addition, there are past commitments.
The city is currently spending funds on designing public facilities improvements. We will
get to that again in a second, but just to remind you, there is an expectation on the part
of the Department of Housing and Urban Development that if a community spends
funds designing a public facility that they move that project forward to construction
within a reasonable time frame. So, to dive in, the activities that were proposed include
continued assistance through the Meridian Food Bank, they have, frankly, been one of
the city's strongest partners as a sub recipient thus far, so certainly including -- or
continuing that assistance to them was thrown out as a possibility. Affordable housing.
In the past we have worked with the Boise Ada County Housing Authority to meet that
objective. This year we were approached in addition by Neighborhood Housing
Services, also located in Boise, but their jurisdiction is broader than that, so without
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June 8, 2010
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going into the intricacies of who is providing the service before you this evening is
affordable housing and we are trying to determine where that falls on the list of priorities
here. Proposed during the public meeting on May 26th was the possibility of using
CDBG funds for some sort of foreclosure prevention and educational counseling,
something along those lines. Brief side note on that. Staff did not receive any actual
proposals that spells out exactly what that would look like. Similarly, homelessness
prevention is another issue that was discussed at the public meeting, people suggested
taking another look at Catch or something similar. When we took a look at that in the
past, the restrictions that apply to CDBG make it somewhat more limited than what they
do over in Boise, but it's still something that we could potentially consider down the road
in the future. They also talked about a shelter as a substantial longer term goal, but for
purposes of next year's CDBG action plan, the amount of funding that's available
doesn't necessarily lend itself to a project of that magnitude. So, that might be another
one to keep in mind if we draft the consolidated plan coming up here next year for a
down-the-road priority. I was also approached by the community garden folks who Luke
mentioned in his presentation earlier this evening. Their overall dollar amount was
relatively small compared to some of the other possible projects that we could pursue,
but, nonetheless, that's in here and I was interested in Council's take to see where that
shakes out as a possible use of CDBG funds. In addition, a familiar project to City
Council, Five Mile Creek, segment H-1, pathway construction, and that is the project
alluded to earlier, it's currently under design. Parametrics is working diligently on that.
It parallels Five Mile Creek between Pine and Fairview and if we need to go into
additional detail on that project we certainly can. Another activity that we have been
funding in years past is code enforcement in the low moderate impact area surrounding
downtown. We have worked with the police department and the code enforcement folks
to identify a process through which we can provide for reimbursement to the city for that
targeted proactive code enforcement that goes on in the eligible area. So, what's
worked well with us in the past -- while I'm pausing for a second, if there is any
questions that I can answer I would be happy to do so.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor. Quick question
back flow meters in LMI areas?
Matt, code enforcement, does that include
De Weerd: Nice try.
Ellsworth: Madam Mayor, Council, Councilman Hoaglun, not that I'm aware of.
Hoaglun: It's a safety issue, health and safety issue, so, you know.
Ellsworth: Something we could take a closer look at if you like.
Hoaglun: Just throwing it out there.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
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Zaremba: Not that we need to be adding to the list, but I guess a question about
whether they might qualify. Is it Allumbaugh House? I'm trying to think of the --
Bird: Yeah. Allumbaugh.
Zaremba: Am I saying it right? Meridian makes a contribution to that. Could this --
could this fund help with Meridian's contribution there? And, then, also Meridian Cares
-- is that the right name? For the months -- and the water department's billing, if we
attempt to help somebody, I mean they have to go through a vetting process to qualify
for that, so they clearly would be low moderate income people that apply for Meridian
Cares. I just -- I don't want to -- I don't want to get into deciding each individual one, but
we have a process for doing that and just could this contribute money into Meridian
Cares?
Ellsworth: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Zaremba, in
response to the first proposed activity, that's something that I would need to research a
little bit more closely, the Allumbaugh House. I believe it would be an eligible use of
funds, but I'm reluctant to speak off the cuff without diving in and making sure I'm giving
the accurate answer. My first inclination is that it would probably detract from public
services, if I had to guess, so to translate that would be money that would not be
available for the Food Bank or some other of those public service type projects. But, in
any event, that's something that I can definitely research, especially depending on
where it falls on the overall list of priorities. It's -- I included another category on my
spreadsheet here, so that's now something in one of those rows. In response to
Meridian Cares, that's one that in the past we discussed at the suggestion of Stacy in
finance, take a look at it and it may require some tweaking of exactly what the
requirements are to be eligible for that assistance, but that's another one that I think
would be an eligible CDBG project, so there is some pros there, it's a great service and
it's something that we can certainly take a look at. The cons are that it's somewhat
difficult to peg an exact dollar amount that's going to go along with that, again, it may
require the revision of some of the eligibility criteria that the city uses now. We may
have to tighten the screws on it if that's the direction that we go. So, other elements to
consider, but those are both very good suggestions and, like 1 said, they are on the list
here, we can see where they play out with you out of the rest of the city's priorities.
De Weerd: Tom has a comment?
Barry: Madam Mayor, Councilman Zaremba, I just wanted to point out on the Meridian
Cares program, as much as I support that program, it is not fully utilized to date and so
we actually have funds left over in the program that we financed, and so I just hate to
see CDBG funds go to finance that program when it's already underutilized. So, I think
we have some work to try to get that program more heavily utilized and through
awareness and those kinds of things and, then, perhaps we can come back in revisit it
with CDBG funds, but at this point it would seem like there might be higher priorities for
those funds.
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June 8, 2010
Page 79 of 85
Zaremba: Absolutely. Thank you.
Ellsworth: And, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, to -- again, to reiterate that
concern the staff identified earlier, when we start getting into those two or three
thousand dollar projects, just so that the -- the Council is aware, staff is going to be
spread rather thin with this consolidated plan update in the first place and starting to
pepper the city with projects of that size is somewhat concerning from where we are
sitting. Of course, we will do anything that we can with the direction that we are given,
but that's another consideration to keep in mind.
De Weerd: I think it's significant size, just not what was budgeted for. So, it all depends
on what the definitions of that is or are.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: I think Matt's looking for priorities in the list of activities or other activities.
don't need any other activity, there is plenty given your preamble to this. My number
one would be Food Bank. My number two would be Five Mile, because we have
already committed to that and we talked about doing this in the past. My third would be
code enforcement. This affects that. I like the idea of the human safety and health in
the LMI area and it relates to water quality, potable water, and irrigation systems, so
think there is a real opportunity there to maybe accomplish a couple things.
De Weerd: Steve, did you have a comment?
Siddoway: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I was just going to mention along
the same vein as the Meridian Cares program that in parks we have a care enough to
share program that funds low to moderate income folks that want to participate in
summer camps, classes, things like that. Our request toward that fund are increasing.
We currently still have funds that go towards it. I would just put that out there for
possible discussion, maybe, in future years, because if I were choosing this year
between that or File Mile Creek, I would choose File Mile Creek, but just to get that on
the radar. We can track that over the next year and see where we are at a year from
now.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird:
Bird: Matt, I would concur with Charlie on Food Bank number one and Five Mile Creek
number two. Get that out. And, then, after that there is, you know, code enforcement
and some other things, whatever we need, but I think those two are very, very important
to continue with.
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June 8, 2010
Page 80 of 85
Ellsworth: Thank you.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor and Matt, I like the list that Charlie laid out there. I did want to
ask about affordable housing. Don't we already use some CDBG funding with Sage
Resources for purchases of homes or are we using another pot of money for that, that
they -- I'm trying to remember. It's been awhile since we had that presentation, but --
Ellsworth: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Hoaglun, I'm not aware
of any -- any affordable home ownership assistance that's being provided through Sage.
Sage has been involved in administering CDBG funds through the city that was prior to
the city obtaining the entitlement city status, so those funds filtered through Department
of Commerce through the state and states, then, administer those for us. The
affordable housing assistance we have provided in the past has been through Ada
County Housing Authority and they do, you're absolutely correct, provide down
payment, closing costs, and related assistance to -- to allow low moderate income home
buyers who may not otherwise be able to afford a home in Meridian, to get out and do
so. Another side note, that's probably HUD's favorite activity that the city is currently
engaged in, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and right now that is the
housing component of the city's CDBG programs, so -- so, staff, again, would be
somewhat inclined to recommend including at least some amount of money to continue
toward that objective in next year's plan, but, again, it will all be back before you guys
and in the form of the draft coming up here in a couple of weeks.
Hoaglun: Yeah, I kind of like that, because it meets some goals of taking houses,
getting people that might not be able to get into one into one, taking up excess in the
market -- I mean there is lots of benefits, renovating neighborhoods and if they like it
they can assist with money, so --
Ellsworth: So, was that a vote for --
Hoaglun: I would like to throw that into the list that Councilman Rountree had thrown
out there as something that should be considered.
De Weerd: And, you know, I guess I would like to make a pitch more for the foreclosure
prevention and a lot of that is -- if you look at the Food Bank and Five Mile Creek, those
are going to serve a lot more people and so will the foreclosure prevention serve more
than the affordable housing piece, because you can only do such a few people with the
down-payment and closing costs assistance. But, you know, it's kind of that teach them
to fish type of concept is you can touch a lot more people with an education component.
That's my two cents worth.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
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June 8, 2010
Page 81 of 85
Bird: I think that's a great, great concept, but the horror stories I tell, I hear the
foreclosure things are quite hard to get the banks and stuff to work with you, unless you
want to pay them completely off and take a new deal. So, I don't, know, I think helping
somebody get into a new home might be a little better approach now than the
foreclosure, while I hate to see anybody get foreclosed on.
Ellsworth: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Bird, one possible
compromise solution to consider again, but foreclosure prevention was discussed as a
possible activity idea and no tangible proposal came before me. Thus far anyway. I
know that there is an awful lot of informational materials out there that are available and
an eligible use of the city's administrative allocation, that 20 percent of the overall
allocation could be to print some additional ones, to do what we can to get the available
resources out there and available within the community to point them in the direction we
need to go in to obtain the services that are already available.
De Weerd: Thank you, Matt.
Ellsworth: Another follow up consideration of foreclosure prevention is I'm fairly sure the
only way that we could really do that, other than information distribution would be
through public services. So, the next question, Mayor, is foreclosure prevention versus
the Food Bank versus other -- other services that we are currently providing.
De Weerd: I think the Food Bank would win. Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Just to chime in with the rest, I think my priorities would be Food Bank
assistance, Five Mile Creek, code enforcement and affordable housing would be my top
four and including the ones that I suggested earlier, would be farther down on the list
than those four. The only adjustment to that is I don't think we have sorted through
what the wonderful gift from the Chinese artists is going to mean. They have given us --
donated some art for us to auction off for the benefit of the Food Bank and the Boys and
Girls Club and the senior center and if -- I'm not sure we have clarified whether it means
all the art they left here or selected pieces, but those are valuable pieces of art that may
provide us with some sizable contributions and I just think we need to throw that into the
mix here someplace.
De Weerd: Well, I think it's a whole different ball of wax, but on that --
Zaremba: We gave a lot to the Food Bank through the art program, we might use that
money differently from this grant.
De Weerd: We don't want to be the middle man. I think that the best way to deal with
that gift is to let the three organizations deal with it and so we can talk about that.
Zaremba: No. That makes sense. That's fine.
De Weerd: Okay. I'm not getting into selling art.
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June 8, 2010
Page 82 of 85
Zaremba: Okay.
Ellsworth: Well, Madam Mayor, Council Members, Council Member Hoaglun and as
well as Mayor de Weerd, if you care to weigh in on your favor activity up on screen
there?
Hoaglun: Matt, you know, I like Charlie's list that he had, but I did want to have that
affordable housing component on that list. I mean if I had to rank them, if I remember,
Food Bank was one. We are already into the Five Mile Creek pathway construction and
we need to keep going with that.
Hoaglun: I'd say affordable housing and code enforcement.
De Weerd: Me, too.
Ellsworth: I apologize, Mayor, was that concurrence? Okay. Very good. Well, I
appreciate that. What I heard was, of course, Food Bank, Five Mile Creek, code
enforcement and affordable housing also up there as another priority. So, if this were
an agreement there, those would be the instructions that I will keep in mind as we are
drafting next year's plan and looking forward to preliminary prioritization over the next
several weeks. Staff will prepare the draft action plan, get it out for public review. I'm
shooting for the 18th to get it out where we need to have it for the public to come by and
take a look. Coming up on June 27th -- or 22nd, excuse me, would be an additional
public hearing to present the draft plan, to open the minimum 30 day public comment
period that's required by -- by federal regulations, as well as a citizen participation plan,
following up to that meeting on August 3rd, at which time we could close the public
hearing, Council can consider any input received on the draft plan during the public
comment period and if this Council is so inclined, to take action on the plan and, then,
we can go ahead and forward the adopted plan to the Department of Housing and
Urban Development for their review on August 11th, give or take a week before the
deadline there to get that to them for them to consider it.
Item 8: Ordinances
A. Ordinance No. 10-1449: An Ordinance of the City of Meridian
Granting Annexation and Zoning for 5.63 Acres of Land
Located at the Northeast Corner of S. Ten Mile Road and W.
Overland Road Meridian, Idaho More Commonly Known as
Southridge West Commercial by Cabra Creek, LLC from RUT
to M-E (Mixed Employment District)
B. Ordinance No. 10-1450 (First Reading): City of Meridian Solid
Waste Ordinance
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June 8, 2010
Page 83 of 85
De Weerd: Thank you, Matt. Okay. We move to Item No. 8 under Ordinances. I would
ask the city clerk to, please, read Item A and B, Ordinance 10-1449 and 10-1450, with
the notation that on 10-1450 it's the first reading.
Holman: Thank you, Madam Mayor. City of Meridian Ordinance No. 10-1449, an
ordinance AZ 09-010, Southridge West, Cabra, for annexation of a tract of land situated
in the northeast one quarter of Section 23, Township 3 North, Range 1 West, Boise
Meridian, Ada County, Idaho, as described in Attachment A and annexing certain lands
and territory situated in Ada County, Idaho, and adjacent and contiguous to the
corporate limits of the City of Meridian, as requested by the City of Meridian,
establishing and determining the land use zoning classification of said lands from RUT
to ME, Mixed Employment District, in the Meridian City Code, providing that copies of
this ordinance shall be filed with the Ada County assessor, the Ada County recorder,
and the Idaho State Tax Commission, as required by law, and providing for a summary
of the ordinance and providing for a waiver of the reading of the rules and providing an
effective date.
Holman: This is the first reading of City of Meridian Ordinance No. 10-1450, an
ordinance repealing Title 4, Chapter 1, Meridian City Code, related to title, purpose, and
intent, definitions, compulsory use required, enforcement authorities, franchise
agreement, bond, rules and regulations, solid advisory commission established, fees,
collection of solid waste and recyclable materials, special collection services .and
specific collection standards, prohibitions, nuisance declared, penalty, severability, and
providing an effective date.
De Weerd: Thank you. You have heard these two ordinances read by title only. Since
Item 8-B is the first reading, I would ask Council for a motion to approve Item 8-A.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we approve Ordinance No. 10-1449 with suspension of rules.
Rountree: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve Item 8-A. If there is no
discussion, Madam Clerk, will you call roll.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Nary: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Meridian City Council Workshop
June 8, 2010
Page 84 of 85
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I just wanted to make you aware of the
reason we did first reading on the solid waste ordinance is that in the number of
iterations we have had of this ordinance, two sentences got dropped from Section 4-1-
10, subsection F, that were how the automated collection process is done, so we will
reinsert those and put it on your next agenda for second and third reading for approval.
Item 9: Other Items
A. Executive Session per Idaho State Code 67-2345 (1)(c) - To
Conduct Deliberations Concerning Labor Negotiations or to
Acquire an Interest in Real Property, Which is Not Owned by a
Public Agency
B. (fl - to consider and advise its legal representatives in pending
litigation
De Weerd: Thank you. Okay. Item 9-A is an Executive Session. I would entertain a
motion to adjourn.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we go into Executive Session as per Idaho State Code 67-2345(1)(c) and
(1)(f).
Rountree: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to adjourn into Executive Session. Madam
Clerk, will you call roll.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
EXECUTIVE SESSION: (Into at 10:58 p.m. and out of at 11:34 p.m.)
De Weerd: -- come out?
Rountree: So moved.
Zaremba: Second.
Meridian City Council Workshop
June 8, 2010
Page 85 of 85
De Weerd: All those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Rountree: Move to adjourn.
Bird: Second.
De Weerd: All those in favor? Thank you. All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 11:34 P.M.
(AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS)
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