2011-01-11Meridian Citv Council Meeting January 11 2011
A meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 6:10 p.m., Tuesday,
January 11, 2011, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd.
Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, Keith Bird, Brad Hoaglun, and David
Zaremba.
Members Absent: Charlie Rountree.
Others Present: Bill Nary, Jacy Jones, Anna Canning, Rich Dees, Scott Colaianni, Mark
Niemeyer, Robert Simison and Dean Willis.
Item 1: Roll-call Attendance:
Roll call.
X David Zaremba X Brad Hoaglun
Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird
X Mayor Tammy de Weerd
de Weerd: I will go ahead and welcome you all to tonight's meeting. For the record it is
Tuesday, 1 /11 /2011. So, 1 /11 /11. I thought it was pretty cool. Okay. Moving on. We
will start tonights meeting with roll call attendance.
Item 2: Pledge of Allegiance
de Weerd: Item No. 2 is the Pledge of Allegiance. If you will all rise and join us in the
pledge.
(Pledge of Allegiance recited.)
Item 3: Adoption of the Agenda.
de Weerd: Item No. 4 is -- or 3 is adoption of the agenda.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
de Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: A couple things to note as I turn on my microphone. We have a request to
move Items 5-S and 5-L to No. 7 for further discussion. And under the Consent Agenda
5-K is resolution number 11-768 and 5-L, which is now on Item 7, is resolution number
11 -- 11-169. And under ordinances, Item 9-A is Ordinance No. 11-1470. And with that
move adoption of tonight's agenda as mentioned.
Zaremba: Second.
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 2 of 36
de Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the agenda as stated. All those in
favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Item 4: Presentations:
A. Certificate of Appreciation to Wendy Newton-Huckabay for her
Service as a Planning and Zoning Commissioner
de Weerd: Item 5 is our Consent Agenda. Four. We are missing three tonight. Okay.
Item 4 we have a presentation. And I'm going to go ahead and move down to the
podium. I would -- I would like to -- do I have to turn on anything for these -- okay.
would like to recognize Wendy Newton-Huckabay. I would ask Wendy to please come
forward. Wendy has served on our Planning and Zoning since 2004 and our staff has
put together some stats about that. She has reviewed over 200 annexation requests,
222 preliminary plats, 238 Conditional Use Permits. In total she attended 185 hearings.
And made decisions or recommendations on 834 applications. So, she's been a busy
girl and this is all as a volunteer. And we have two of our Planning and Zoning
Commissioners here tonight. You know how many hours are put into these applications
reviewing it. Also keeping current on our UDC, our Comprehensive Plan, and many of
those activities as well. So, Wendy has given this a lot of time and attention and we
greatly appreciate it. We have tracked Wendy and she has personally volunteered over
400 hours of her time. Many of those meetings went until -- I shutter to think that even
one went to 3:00 in the morning and there were citizens still there, that is why they
continued on. But we weren't even keeping track of a lot of this in 2004 and '5 as far as
the hours. So, we are greatly indebted to Wendy, because in those two years she
probably dedicated over 300 hours, because those were during our growth time. But
we would like to thank you, Wendy, for your public service to this community, your well
reasoned and thought through recommendations, and certainly what you added to the
dialogue of the Planning and Zoning Commission, bringing a certain perspective that
was certainly valued by not only your fellow commissioners, but certainly the City
Council and Mayor and, most importantly, our citizens. So, thank you so much. We
have a very appropriate plaque here and it's: You Made A Difference. And we really
sincerely believe you did. Thank you for being here.
Newton-Huckabay: I just want to thank you for taking the time to do this. I had no idea
that it was that many hours when you spread it out over that time frame and so that
certainly puts a little bit of a different perspective on it and I'd like to say that I'll miss
Thursday nights in a little -- in some ways I will. I feel like I did a good job for the city.
always brought passion to it. I grew up in this town and I hope that whoever
supercedes me gets out of it what I did. So, thank you.
Canning: Wendy, the Mayor forgot to add planning staff to the list of people that will
miss you and appreciate you.
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 3 of 36
de Weerd: I knew if I forgot her she would mention it anyway. Certainly our planning
staff greatly appreciates it. I know you have worked with many of the staff over the
tenure of your volunteerism and you have seen them come and go, but we certainly
greatly appreciate what you have done to the look and feel of our community. So thank
you. And you can be dismissed if you would like. So can your fellow commissioners.
We appreciate Tom O'Brien and Joe Marshall being here with us this evening, too.
Item 5: Consent Agenda.
A. Approve Minutes of December 28, 2010 City Council Special
Meeting
B. Approve Minutes of December 28, 2010 City Council Regular
Meeting
C. Approve Minutes of January 4, 2011 City Council Regular
Meeting
D. Recreational Pathway Easement Agreement between the
Trailway Park Subdivision Homeowners Association and the
City of Meridian for Jackson Drain Connection at East Blue
Heron Lane
E. Recreational Pathway Easement Agreement between the
Trailway Park Subdivision Homeowners Association and the
City of Meridian for the Jackson Drain Connection at East
James Court Drive
G. Development Agreement for Approval: MDA 10-007 Police
Department Rezone by City of Meridian Planning Department
Located 1401 E. Watertower Street (Lot 8, Block 2 of Murdoch
Subdivision No. 2) Request: Repeal the Recorded
Development Agreement (Instrument #100040596) Required
with the Annexation of the Stratford Business Park (aka
Murdoch Subdivision No. 2)
H. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law for Approval: PP 10-007
Kingsbridge by Boise Hunter Homes Located at East Side of S.
Eagle Road, Midway Between E. Victory Road and E. Amity
Road Request: Preliminary Plat Approval for 72 Residential
Building Lots and 7 Common Lots on Approximately 38.31
Acres in an R-2 Zoning District
I. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law for Approval: VAR 10-
003 Lanark Property by Ted Sigmont Located 3131 and 3163 E.
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 4 of 36
Lanark Street Request: Variance to UDC 11-3H-4C.3 Which
Requires a 10-Foot Wide Multi-Use Pathway be Constructed
Along State Highway 55 /Eagle Road
J. Final Order for Approval: TE 10-030 Harks Canyon Creek by
JBS Enterprises, LLC Located at 1845 W. Franklin Road
Request: Two (2) Year Time Extension to Obtain the City
Engineer's Signature on the Final Plat
K. Resolution No. 11-768: Accepting the Addition of the Artwork
of Edie Shutte Martin to the 2011 Initial Point Gallery Schedule
de Weerd: Okay. Our next item is our Consent Agenda.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
de Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: As noted earlier, we are going to move 5-F and 5-L to No. 7 on the agenda
for further discussion and 5-K is resolution number 11-768. And with those changes,
Madam Mayor, I move approval of the Consent Agenda and authorize the Mayor to sign
and Clerk to attest.
Zaremba: Second.
de Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the Consent Agenda as stated. If
there is no discussion, Madam Clerk.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, absent; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
de Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Item 6: Community Items
A. Regional Economic Development Update from Boise Valley
Economic Partnership (BVEP) with Clark Krause
de Weerd: Item 6 under our Community Items, we do have a presentation tonight by
Clark Krause. He is with the Boise Valley Economic Partnership. Welcome, Clark.
Krause: It's only going to take two hours, so -- Madam Mayor and Members of the
Council, thank you so much for your -- for your time tonight and I promise I will only be
about five minutes, actually, and that's plenty of time to listen to me. But I just wanted
to, number one, I think Mayor asked me to come and kind of just meet you all and let
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 5 of 36
you know what our plans are going forward. The Boise Valley Economic Partnership is
here to represent all of the valley when it comes to trying to bring business into the
valley, but also helping advocate for business that is already here and, most
importantly, advocating for business that is already here. So, I want to commend all of
you for your -- for the work you have done with the core opportunity, with the medical
services, and looking at other opportunities that fit in the valley, in Meridian, and also
the rest of the Treasure Valley as well. So, I want to commend you for the work and the
strategies that you have put forward already. I know it's been a long haul and a lot of
work and we will continue to help you with that as we go forward. Our plan is to help
the communities and bring opportunities, bring jobs into your community, bring jobs into
the valley through recruitment, as well by advocating and creating more opportunity for
the businesses here, so when it comes to state policies, when it comes to community
policies, when it comes to building and planning and permitting and those types of
things, we really hope that our voice as an objective front sometimes can -- can educate
the communities in what we can all be doing better. We need to stand as a team,
obviously. The Mayor will tell you that Ihave -- I told her from the get go that I think a
win for the valley and the right fit in the valley is a win for all of us and I think Meridian
will get a lot of those wins. When I look at the job that you have done on the retail front
and what you have created as far as the opportunities and what I have heard out in the
communities --Ihave had over one hundred meetings at this point, quite a few more
than that with private sector partners that all of you deal with on a daily basis from the --
from Micron all the way to Caldwell, and talked to them about what is working in the
valley and what's not working and what we need to improve upon. I really hope that you
can count on the Boise Valley Economic Partnership to help with that. When it comes
to recruiting I come out of New Mexico, I have been there for the last six years, you're
going to have to forgive me for that, but I was running the sales, marketing, and
recruitment efforts for the state of New Mexico and during that time period of six years
we brought in 14,000 -- over 14,000 jobs, which was -- I met my marker and exceeded
that and we had very measurable accountable goals and measurable -- I'll have
measurable accountable goals to you as a city, as a community, and for the valley. So,
I want you to expect that from us and demand it from us and also we hope that we can
get things to the finish line a little bit better. Boise Valley Economic Partnership has
been around for about five years and I think they really helped brand the valley. I think
they did a good job of that. I mean kind of got the recognition out there, built some
relationships, but now it's time to get some things to the finish line and I think that's why
they hired me and if they didn't hire me for that they were sadly mistaken, because
that's really what I'm here to do. So, I really want to help create jobs in the valley.
There is three of us in our office right now, but more than what's in our office is what's
out in these communities. For us to close a deal, for us to bring anything into the valley
or for us to expand in the valley we need your help. We need your help as leaders of
this -- of your community, leaders of the valley, leaders in the state of Idaho. So, I'm
really looking forward to working with all of you. My plans are -- I start in January here
and will be out on the road. I'll meet with over a hundred targeted industry companies in
their headquarters across the country and if we have to we will get on an airplane and
go overseas, but we have those targets kind of honed in, but it's a work in progress.
Those will continue to change as we get better at what we are doing, but those targeted
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 6 of 36
industries -- we go look at a targeted company that is having some kind of transitional
change taking place. So, we walk into those companies and we meet with a targeted
executive. And I think that's the most important thing I can tell you is that you need to
get in front of the decision maker and so that is -- that's -- that is the key to what I was
doing in New Mexico and I'm bringing kind of that same tooling to the valley here and
into your city and so that will be -- you're invited to come with us, by the way, so that you
know I don't play golf and ski while I'm on the road and you can call me at the last
minute and join us for a sales mission. So, we will be accountable and we will be
measurable whether we are in the valley or we are Chicago or whether we are in
Portland or whether we are in Washington -- the state of Washington, we really want to
let you know that this is going to take all of us as stakeholders to get it done and we
need to move some of the state pieces along, we need to move some of the community
pieces along. I talked to Madam Mayor about how great the reports I have had about
Meridian have been with these hundred stakeholders on the private sector side. One of
the things I think that you have really put in place here -- and probably competitively in
the valley have done a great job, obviously, you have created this retail corridor. You
also have a lot of back office units here and I think those two advantages and where
you're located in the valley being right centric to all the workforce in the valley, already
polishing up the permitting and planning processes of the city and also showing that you
aggressively want business here, will bode well as we bring you prospects for the
valley. As far as helping you in the valley, that's what we are kind of figuring out
together. As we work together with each city they have different expectations of how
we can help them, the Boise Valley Economic Partnership, and so some of your
neighbors would like us in their business more, some of your neighbor cities would like
us in their business less, some of them say why are you in my city talking to business,
you should be out recruiting business, whereas here, such as in Meridian, I know that
you have a big focus on organically growing within what's here and both are important.
And so I commend you for your efforts, I commend you for that vision. You're ahead of
the game. You're ahead of the game when I talked to the hundred -- over a hundred
people I have talked to on the private sector, there were -- most -- 99 percent of it was
positive and the one percent I can't talk about and I don't even know what it would have
been. In fact, there was no one percent, everybody said good things when they were
dealing with the Council, the Mayor, and your permitting process and other things that
they had to work with. So, thank you so much for your time and I'd open it up for
questions at this point.
de Weerd: Council, questions?
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
de Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Clark, just a quick question. You know, we have Brenda who is our economic
development director. How does that relationship work between BVEP and someone
local like Brenda? How do you describe that?
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 7 of 36
Krause: I have a big note here that I -- that says Brenda on the bottom of my -- my
notes here and I was going to end with that. I will tell you that you have the right person
in place and she is doing a great job for you. She represents you well and I think she
brings a sophistication to the valley, not just for Meridian, but for all of us as economic
developers. Her experience in workforce development on a national basis -- I think if
you could do something is listen to her and make sure she's being heard, because I
think she has a lot of -- a lot of good perspectives on things. Also she is a very
objective player. But to answer your question, we are -- we have to be and if we are not
we need to sit down with you, we need to be absolutely working as partners with
Brenda, you as Council, and Madam Mayor to make sure that when we do have deals
in town that Meridian is selling Meridian. I am a -- for a better word, a gunslinger out
there that's going to hook them and bring them to you, but I promise you they are not
coming unless the community closes it and what I say by closing it, that's a hundred
people -- you know, they have to talk to the private sector and make sure business is
happy here. They have to talk to the public sector and make sure that they are going to
be treated as they expect to and as your competition would treat them and Brenda is a
critical part. We meet as a working group, each community across the valley meets
once a month, and we get together and I really see Brenda and all of you as my boss,
but we meet with all the ED directors in the valley and, then, we -- we figure out a plan
together and I think one of the other criticisms I would tell you that Boise Valley
Economic Partnership had in the past is we kind of came and asked for the check and,
then, we checked out. I think collaboration is the answer to closing deals and building
and expanding business that already exists here and we can't do that alone, so we will
be working with Brenda all the time.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
de Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Clark, just a compliment. You sound like a real go getter and I think you hit it on
the head when you said about the previous administration down there kind of come in
and forgot. You sound like you're going to go do it. We will help you all we can.
Krause: Thank you, sir.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
de Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Just a comment. We have had a couple of short conversations before, but I
just want to say I'm thrilled to have you here and in that position and we look forward to
working with you.
Krause: Thank you.
Zaremba: And, yes, we think the world of Brenda also.
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 8 of 36
Krause: Appreciate that, councilman.
de Weerd: Okay. So, I'm going to ask you the tough question. Since no one else did I
have been behaving myself. You mentioned that you were going out and talking to one
hundred targeted companies and I appreciate the more targeted approach. Who helps
identify these companies and what industries are you targeting?
Krause: Well, the identification isn't over yet. We have our first -- we have our first
sales mission -- and this won't surprise any of you. We are going to the Silicon Valley.
And, really, the reason we are going there is historical. When you look at the workforce
shed that currently exists in the valley and the people we are currently losing in the
valley, a lot of that are tech-based jobs. So, we will go into the Silicon Valley and talk
about Micron and HP and the legacy that is here and also some of those -- those
companies that have come out of that. So, I'd say some of the identification has taken
place, Madam Mayor, but not all of it. We will be chasing ag-related food processing.
We will be chasing kind of the historical successes that the valley has had. Now, I will
tell you with that being said we will also chase things that you emphasize as a
community that fit in your community. So, if we need to add things, which we have
talked about, we will add those things to our targets. We are not -- by any means is this
a textbook that you get to write and, then, you sit down and, then, that's -- you never
change it. It's going to be a work in progress. So, I really would invite you all to tell me
what we are missing within the targets. We -- you know, Mayor, we have talked about
some of the things that we need to add to our agenda and we will. We also found some
things just in this community alone -- we were talking to Dennis Johnson, who has a
large facility in your community, as you know, and he said this place is the Switzerland
for insurance companies because of the tax -- taxes and other things that are related to
Meridian and the taxes and other things related to the state of Idaho. And so that was
one that didn't come up on our targets. Are we chasing it today? Absolutely. So, we do
have some identified targets, the tech areas, food, some of the back office, some of
those things. But I promise you that we will take seriously if you have other targets for
us. We will do the analysis and if there are companies you want us to call on that from
my point of view don't make sense, I promise you we will still call them, we will still
chase them.
de Weerd: I hope you would tell us if it did make sense, though. Two way
communication is important. Now, is the working group also looking at the marketing
materials to make sure it adequately reflects each of the unique cities within the
Treasure Valley?
Krause: So, when we -- when we are doing recruiting -- or let's say -- what I call that is
the fulfillment pieces that are related to what we are sending out. When we have a call
that comes in and they say they are interested in the following facilities and other things,
won't say we are finished with that, Mayor, I think we are just beginning with the
fulfillment pieces and making sure we have the right targeting materials. I would be
lying to you today if I said that I feel comfortable with what we currently have in place.
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 9 of 36
Does that mean we are not looking at it? We are looking at it. Right now it's the
responsibility of each community to create a piece that makes sense for that community
and sells that community, but the working group right now is working at making sure
that that piece will resonate on our sales missions and that piece will resonate if
someone is calling for information on back office. So, right now as we speak those
things are available to people, but they need some improvement. But we are working
on that as well right now.
de Weerd: Well, I was in a meeting today with someone who came and visited me on
your behalf I'm sure, Michael Ballentine and Dennis Johnson and -- name is escapes
me. But they mentioned when Project Doublewide came in and the preparedness of
our team and the quality of materials presented -- so this is for Planning and Public
Works, congratulations -- is certainly what our team put together in being able to
respond to the needs and exactly what the company was looking for. You made our
community look very -- very well and appreciate always putting a good face on
Meridian. So, I just want to make sure when you go on your visits next month in the
Silicon Valley that whatever you need from us you have and that we are present in your
portfolio of information.
Krause: Absolutely.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
de Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I would just add -- but you probably already know this, but just to make sure.
There is a group that I think is called the Idaho Technology Council led by a Mr. Rich
Raimondi. Their charter, so to speak, I think, is to learn what our technology
businesses need from Idaho and from the community both in the way of education and
workforce and tax incentives, whatever. I think they have an open slate on what helps
the technology companies, specifically the ones that are already here, but also what
would attract them, so it sounds like they might be a good resource for you if you
haven't already been put in contact with them. They seem to be doing some of the
things similar to you and they are in the technology field and get your group to get them
online with --
Krause: Thank you. I have met with some of them and I have another meeting I think
Thursday with them again. And that will be a work in progress. I mean, again, it will
take -- you know, when I look at the -- the assets available throughout the valley I think
strategically we have to also look at what are the assets of Idaho, because we are a
small state, we are a small population, so one of the things that I notice right away is we
used to sell the heck out of Sandy and Los Alamos Labs and INL has not been sold that
well strategically when I look historically over the last five years by us and I can tell you
having a national lab here and having that asset with you when you're on the road
means a lot. We have -- we have invited and they have accepted putting a strategic
person with us in Silicon Valley on our first sales mission, so INL is chomping at the bit
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 10 of 36
to help and the Idaho Tech Group and there are a lot of groups. And, then, there are a
lot of groups that have been disenfranchised for one reason or another and we are
going to try to get them back in. I'm not promising any miracles, but I think there are
some statewide efforts that we could put in place and valley-wide efforts to make sure
that those -- those groups that have stopped to participate or stopped being part of the
solution -- things you work on every day, right, as a city, you -- I mean as a city leader,
you know, you're trying to reengage those groups that have solutions for your -- for your
community and we are definitely working on those. And that's why I have had so many
interviews. But we have had some great meetings with INL. I'm very excited about
having them show up in Silicon Valley with us, because most of the renewable
companies and other folks that are in the valley, Silicon Valley -- and I have called on a
hundred companies there when I was in New Mexico, they have relationships with those
national labs, they know people that work at INL. And so to show up with the Kevin
Bacon effect where, you know, your cousin used to know my cousin, who knew that
cousin -- those things matter and we have got to use every single resource we have
here in the state of Idaho.
de Weerd: Thank you.
Hoaglun: I have got a question about something you brought up. I think I read an
article here not too long ago about the lack of qualified IT-type folks in the valley that we
are trying to bring in high tech and yet -- not production workers, but like some of our
folks back here, we have got a presentation by AT and HR and legal later and -- but
people who create, maintain, can forward think and do these things in the IT area and if
that's the case, where is your role -- how do you communicate that to our educators,
what role do you have in saying, look, folks, I can go after these companies, but unless
you provide this, it's not going to be successful. I mean you can talk to a lot of folks, but
they are going to be looking at that workforce and say, you know, you just don't have
what we need. So, what's your role in that relationship?
Krause: I have been told there are certain -- there is a high -- there is tech workforce
here of abundance. There are certain areas that are less than what people would like to
see, such as the software developer, that's the one they all talk about. And they don't
mean just a software developer, they want the high level software developer. If you
were really to -- if we walked into Silicon Valley tomorrow and we sat down with ten
executives, they would tell you they can't find enough software developers in Silicon
Valley, the home of those types of things. I think there will always be a shortage in
certain pieces of our industries. Machinists is one of those areas. Across the country
there is a shortage of machinists right now that people need. We will have to put
together -- one of the challenges will be not only do we have your middle to lower end
tech force that you need, but we will help you recruit those that you need on the higher
level, bringing in those higher level developers, that type of thing, that are missing
across the country, not just in the valley here. We need to help them with that. We
need to show them that there is a spouse program and get them on the ground here
and host them while they are in town. And it's not necessarily hosting the person that's
going to get the job, it's hosting -- a lot of times it's the trailing spouse you need to really
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 11 of 36
worry about, because that person may be all excited about that job and really want to
come here, but if they haven't sold the spouse, well, when they get home deal's over.
And whether it be aviation or it be tech, I think one of the things that Boise Valley
Economy Partnership has to offer -- so does the Meridian Chamber of Commerce --
some of the other chambers of commerce in the community, let's look at a way to have,
you know, the host programs that we currently have, let's figure out a way that we can
take that strategically and use it to host the high recruitment level people that we need
to bring into the valley. You're right, the 20 year answer to that is let's develop them
ourselves. But right now it's a shortage and it's across the country. So, we are not
going to get all of them internally grown, we are going to have to make sure that we
have a program that says, you know, we know you need some help with the following
and we will help you and, then, be genuine about it.
de Weerd: That was the wrong question to ask while our software developer is sitting in
the room.
Hoaglun: I was thinking of that as he was answering that, they are thinking, ooh,
kaching kaching, so --
de Weerd: You can't have 'em. Any other questions?
Bird: Just thank you.
de Weerd: Clark, thank you for your time this evening.
Krause: Thank you so much and thank you for your service.
de Weerd: Well, thank you for joining the team. We think it is in much better hands.
Krause: Thank you.
Bird: Amen.
Item 7: Items Moved From Consent Agenda
F. Agreement for Independent Contractor Services with Cascade
Pipeline Corporation for the 4th Street Sewer & Water
Replacement Project Construction for aNot-to-Exceed Amount
$328,855.25
de Weerd: Okay. There were two items moved from the Consent Agenda. Item F and
L. So, we will start with F first and I will turn this over to staff.
Holland: Good evening, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. My name is Roxanne
Holland, I'm a staff engineer with the Public Works Engineering Department. I'm here
this evening to discuss the agreement for independent contractor services with Cascade
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 12 of 36
Pipeline for the 4th Street sewer and water replacement project. We held the bid
opening for the project on December 22nd. Cascade Pipeline came in as the low bidder
at $328,855.25. The second lowest bidder came in at approximately 455,000 dollars,
for a difference of 126,000 dollars between the two bids. Since the bid opening
Cascade Pipeline has expressed some desire to withdraw their bid, but they are
unwilling to forfeit their bid bond, which is five percent of their bid, so approximately
16,000 dollars. Idaho state statute requires that for any contractor to back out of a bid
they forfeit that bid bond. So, tonight we are recommending agreement with -- or
approval of the agreement with Cascade Pipeline, with the caveat that they turn in their
performance and payment -- payment performance bond prior to the Mayor signing and
executing that agreement. We just want to make sure we get their payment
performance bond before we sign any agreement with them. And Keith is here for any
purchasing questions.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
de Weerd: Yes, Mr. Bird.
Bird: Roxanne, how -- who drew the plans and specs?
Holland: We had two design engineers for the project. We kind of combined a sewer
and water project in one and bid them out together. The sewer design engineer was
Civil Survey and the water was Trans Civil Horrocks Engineering.
Bird: Are the plans very good? Detailed?
Holland: Yeah. They are pretty tight.
Bird: So, we are not going to get hit with a bunch of change orders because their bid is
so low?
Holland: I -- because the project is in the downtown area there is always the possibility
for some change orders, because there is so many unknowns. There is -- it's old
infrastructure, we don't always have the best record drawings of what's there. But
don't feel that there should be any change orders that come anywhere near the 126,000
dollar difference. All the bids came in well below what we estimated.
Bird: When somebody -- when somebody is a third the price of the next guy, it brings
up a red flag -- big time red flag to me.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
de Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 13 of 36
Zaremba: And in that vein it concerns me to work with a reluctant contractor. What
position does this put us in legally if we say you have to sign the contract, but you can't
sign it until you put up the bond and they just say, okay, we will never put up the bond.
Holland: The contractor's already signed the agreement for approval, but, then, they
have since said, oh, we -- what can we do to back out of this.
Bird: They have already signed theirs.
Watts: We, actually, do have a little concern with the bond issue. We did get a call
from their bonding agency -- well, it was a --
Holland: Alliance Insurance.
Watts: Yeah. They weren't -- I don't think they specified Cascade directly, did they?
Holland: They did with me when they called me.
Watts: When they called us they did not. They were asking a hypothetical question on
if -- if a contractor signed an agreement and was not able to secure a bid bond what
happens. The bonding agency wanted to know this question. I did talk to Cascade
today, the owner of Cascade today, and he did mention that the bonding company is
very concerned that they are so far under the next low bidder, so we do not have bonds
at this time and you do have the contract in your packet right now and we are going to
recommend that you do not sign that agreement, that if Council does approve it it's with
the caveat that we do receive the bond prior to execution of the agreement and the
purchasing department will hold that agreement until the bonds are received.
Bird: Who is their bid bond through?
Watts: Alliance.
Bird: Alliance again, too? Well, when Alliance gave you the bid bond their -- they are,
basically, guaranteeing you a performance and bond. But I don't know. I'd ask Bill, but
to me it looks like we are getting ourselves into a can of worms right up front, because --
Imean they left so much on the table it's not even funny. I mean I'd give them -- if I was
them I'd give you the five -- six percent and say I guess if I'm going to play with the big
boys I better get like the big boys.
Watts: They were at the bid opening, I believe. They were aware of the bid amounts.
They thought that everything was fine anyway and they were going to stick by their bid,
so they did not request relief from their bid within the time frame that the statute requires
and the statute does not give the Council the ability to waive the bid bond. I wasn't sure
and I read it again and they'd simply state that they forfeit their bond and when he found
that out he decided he wanted to continue with the agreement, but we are in the
position we are today.
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 14 of 36
Bird: Madam Mayor?
de Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I just -- you know, I know if they -- if they want to continue with it we awarded it. If
they get the performance bond I guess there is nothing we can do.
Watts: Yeah. I would ask for --
Bird: Is there -- can we put a deadline on getting the performance bond to us?
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I mean we can put a period of time that
they have to provide that. I don't know that it was in the bid documents, but we can
provide it.
Holland: Per the ISPWC they just updated their standards this year. I looked those up
this evening and it states that the contractor has to deliver those payment performance
bonds with their executed agreement. So, we would require that tomorrow.
Bird: That's normal. Okay. But they have already executed -- they have already signed
the agreement, but they didn't have the bond.
Holland: Correct.
Watts: What happened -- I'll give you a little background there, too. The owner was out
of town and he had another signee for their company actually came into the city and
signed the agreement. Typically we have them do that. We photocopy the agreement
and give it back to them so they can take it to their bonding company. He didn't take a
copy of the contract with him, so, therefore, they have not signed -- they have not --
Bird: The guy that signed it is he --
de Weerd: Authorized?
Bird: -- legally can sign acontract --
Watts: An officer of their corporate -- yeah.
Bird: Well, he could be an officer, but he still might not be able to sign the contract.
Watts: They did submit the authority to sign.
Bird: Well, Madam Mayor, I guess we do what they ask. I mean there is nothing else --
you know, there is nothing else we can do. If they -- if they don't want to forfeit their five
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 15 of 36
percent bid bond and want to go ahead with the project and -- and I guess we just keep
our eyes open and --
de Weerd: Mr. Nary, is there anything that you can add that hasn't been talked about?
Nary: No.
de Weerd: Wow. That's impressive. I'm not going to ask twice.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
de Weerd: Yes.
Bird: But Iwould -- Roxanne, I would make sure that -- that I reminded Alliance that
when they give that bid bond they were insuring, then, that those people would be -- I
don't know what -- did the bid bond say five percent of whatever the bid is or did it put
the bid amount in there?
Watts: I'd have to take a look.
Holland: I believe it's five percent of your bid.
Watts: Yeah.
Bird: That's the way all of --
Watts: I don't think they state an amount on the bid bond.
Bird: They were, basically, telling us right, then, when we accepted -- when we opened
that bid the performance bond was -- was okay. They -- for that -- for whatever they bid
it at. I don't know what else we can do.
Watts: They didn't have second thoughts until after they saw the bid results.
Bird: Just make sure you don't sign it until we got all of -- all our bonds and stuff on file.
Watts: And I would recommend that we only give them the day tomorrow to comply
with the ISPWC's revised requirements.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
de Weerd: As long as we can. Mr. Bird.
Bird: Iwould make a motion that we accept -- we accept this contract or this contract
and for the Mayor to sign upon receiving performance bond and material bond from the
contractor.
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 16 of 36
Watts: And I would add that meets the minimum requirements of the city. We do have
-- we do have bond ratings --
Bird: Now that's an insurance. The bond -- the bond is -- insurance is automatic. That
should be -- he should already have to you.
Watts: Correct. But the bonds are rated also.
Bird: Well, the bonds just bond for what the contract is.
Watts: Yeah. But I mean the bond company. They may go out and get like a -- an off-
shore bonding company. We also require the bond company be in the same category
as the insurance company is. They are rated as well.
de Weerd: Usually we don't have discussion until I have a second.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
de Weerd: Okay.
Bird: Let me see if I get a second here and, then, I will add something to that.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, I'm going to second it with -- if I might restate the motion as I
understand it?
de Weerd: Okay.
Hoaglun: Is that we would approve the agreement and the amounted as long as the
bond requirements are completed before execution of the contract. Is that --
Bird: And the insurance requirements are on file, too.
Hoaglun: Correct. With insurance requirements.
Bird: With the city name all insured.
Hoaglun: I will second that, Madam Mayor.
de Weerd: Okay. Any additional discussion, information needed?
Bird: I have none.
de Weerd: Madam Clerk, will you call roll.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, absent; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 17 of 36
de Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Holland: Thank you very much.
L. Resolution No. 11-169: A Resolution Of The Mayor And The
City Council Of The City Of Meridian, Appointing Steven
Yearsley To Seat 3 Of The Meridian Planning & Zoning
Commission; And Providing An Effective Date
de Weerd: Thank you. Okay. The next item, Item L is the proposed resolution number
11-169. Council, in front of you you do have the recommendation of appointing Steven
Yearsley to Seat 3 of the Meridian Planning and Zoning Commission, with an effective
date. It is the second year of a six year term. So, it will be a five year term. And
would ask if there are any questions?
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
de Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I would only comment that Mr. Yearsley has been a valued parks and
recreation commissioner for many years and I believe he would be an excellent
Planning and Zoning Commissioner.
de Weerd: Thank you. Any questions?
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
de Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I move the approval of Resolution 11-169, appointing Steven Yearsley to
Seat 3 of the Meridian Planning and Zoning Commission.
Bird: Second.
de Weerd: I have a motion and a second. If there is no discussion, Madam Clerk.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, absent; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
de Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 18 of 36
Item 8: Department Reports
A. City Council: City Council Liaison Appointments:
de Weerd: Item 8 under Department Reports. I will turn this over to our Council
President Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor, it falls upon me as Council President to make assignments of
the liaisons of the Council members to the departments and I have done so in
discussion with the other Council members and when lightning struck here is what
happened. Council liaison to the clerk's office will be myself. Council liaison to the
Mayor's office will also be myself. Just makes sense to me that the President of the
Council should have those two. I will also become the liaison to the finance and utility
billing department. Councilman Hoaglun will become the liaison to the Police
Department and to the Public Works Department. Councilman Rountree will become
the liaison to the Parks and Recreation Department and continue as the liaison to the
Planning and Zoning Department. And Councilman Bird will continue both with Fire and
with Legal, HR, and IT. And those appointments are actually effective now as of this
evening. However, I will note that Councilman Rountree will be out of town the rest of
this month and I have made the suggestion that if Parks and Recreation needs a liaison
they should continue to contact Mr. Hoaglun, since he's the most recent liaison and if
Parks and Recs -- I mean if Planning and Zoning needs a liaison contact me, I would be
happy to do it. I'm a former commissioner. Until he returns at the end of January. And
that's the report. Thank you all very much.
de Weerd: Thank you for the report. And I assume since no one is squirming in their
seats the Council members agree.
Hoaglun: Yes, Madam Mayor, it's agood -- we are ready for some heavy lifting.
B. Legal/Human Resources (HR) /Information Technology (IT)
Department: Strategic Plan Update
de Weerd: All right. Very good. Okay. Next department report under Item 8-B is our
legal team, our HR team, and our IT team. Thank you all for being here this evening.
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, thank you for the opportunity to be here
tonight. I'd like to take the lead from Public Works. I only have 200 slides and it will
take about two and a half hours, but it will zoom by, you won't even notice how quickly it
goes.
de Weerd: To the students in the room I will say he was kidding.
Bird: No, he wasn't.
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 19 of 36
Nary: Thank you for the opportunity to be here, Council and Mayor, and the opportunity
to come up and talk a little about our department and the different things we have been
doing and are continuing to do in bringing to you in the next -- this fiscal year as part of
our budget, as part of this ongoing growth that we have and the different things that we
are trying to accomplish to again make our city better. I have the privilege of being the
leader of this department, but I'm certainly not the only leader in this department. We
have a number of different people, many with them are in the room tonight that are part
of our leadership team, part of our IT department, that do a great deal with a very few
number of people, but very highly qualified skilled people and I agree with the Mayor,
I'm sorry that Mr. Krause talked about how great software engineers are needed. He
can't have ours. We really like the ones we have. We'd like them to stay as long as
they would want to be here. But I will get into the presentation, but I am going to make
at least one other additional comment. This presentation wasn't just put together by me,
this was put together by all of our leadership team together in deciding what was the
things we needed to highlight, things we needed to bring to your attention and to raise
the awareness level of -- both for you, as well as for everyone else, so they know what
-- what we really do. I'm sure there is times that you wonder specifically and I say to my
staff a lot that we try very hard to make it look very easy for what we do and we spend a
lot of time making things look pretty easy and you all know and you have all been here
long enough to know it isn't easy to do these things, but we have a lot of really good
people that spend a lot of time making this happen. So, I will get into the presentation,
but 1 just want to make sure you knew that. Part of this presentation -- or the majority of
this presentation was put together by Roma Robertson, one of our new people in IT and
she did a great jog of really making this look really nice and bringing it together in a
great way for everybody to be able to see it.
de Weerd: Since she's new do you want to point her out?
Nary: She's actually right there in front of you. You can see her picture and she's in the
back row. Roma is not our newest person in IT anymore, because Summer is our
newest person. Summer just started last week. Is that right, Summer? Good. Last
week. And if you have really specific IT questions, don't presume I'm going to know the
answer to it, but Terry and Mike are here and they can certainly answer anything that
you may have. If you have specific ones about some of the projects Rob is here as
well. Rob's heading up some of our bigger projects and such. So, we can talk more
specifically if you'd like. You notice we do have one vacancy. Keith Danielson from our
IT staff has chosen to move on and so we are going to miss Keith and he's going to go
on and do great things on his own and we are looking to -- we have Chad Neil who has
been with our IT staff for a little over six months, moved into that network specialist job
and you will see Chad a little more often at some of these things and, then, we will be
looking for a placement for Chad's position. Anyway, that's how our IT section looks. I
just wanted you to see kind of how the organizational structure works and first I want to
talk about fiber. Fiber is something we have been talking about for a number of years.
It's a project that we have looked at for a number of years and how to accomplish this
for the city and why. Basically, I think you have heard us sell this before. Fiber is a
great opportunity for the city to build better connections between our various facilities in
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 20 of 36
away that can be managed better, isn't beholden to somebody else's network -- that's
one of the problems that we have had in the past is because when you attach
yourselves to a fiber network that's been installed or maintained by someone else that
you may end up, basically, sort of being stuck when they want to fix it, when they feel
the necessity to upgrade it, when they feel the value to fixing it or addressing concerns
or problems and so we are working on a fiber plan to bring to you hopefully by the
budget time to be able to look at what could we do over a period of time, a number of
years as part of the CIP to make fiber a more viable alternative for us. There are some
advantages to fiber. First, fiber networks are more stable. I think we all get used to
wireless in this world today and we -- most of the time it's fairly reliable, but we all know
occasionally birds fly in front of antennas, storms happen, things happen and your
wireless connection may not work quite as efficiently or as reliable as another. Fiber
doesn't have those type of down time in the same amount or the same type and so
that's one of the reasons why we think that's a good long-term value that might be of
value to the city. Also -- and, again, fiber is a more secure method, assuming -- you
transmit things over the air versus through a cable or through a fiber network, the
potential for people to be able to -- to see that data or to be able to capture that data is
higher and there are ways to filter that and deal with those kinds of things, but the guys
behind me know better than I do, but fiber, again, provides us a better method for long-
term security and, then, again, there is speed. Speed of fiber is going to be faster than
the wireless and, again, you're not beholden to a lot of other extraneous factors that
may occur and so those are things that we will be bringing to you that we think for the
long term value of the city and one of the things that we have talked about is how to
make it more practical for us. I mean we -- as a city we have talked about this a number
of times and we have looked at trying to connect every facility of the city, every fire
station and police station and as we have tried to work through that we found, you
know, that that may not be the best use of our dollars and I think that's where our
planning I guess is looking at now is what's a more practical use, what do we really
need? I mean do we need to really connect every single facility or do we need to
connect the core facilities of the city. City Hall. Station One where the EOC is. The
police department and the tower. Those are the areas that probably could be done in a
more efficient way than trying to connect fiber all over the city. There are ways that we
could make fiber useful at some of those other facilities that may not require it to be
owned by us and those are things that Terry and Mike and the IT department -- or IT
division are exploring. So, those are things that we will be bringing again to you in the
future, but that's an area that is certainly on our radar and is certainly a significant focus
of IT for the long-term value of the city. Electronic time sheet upgrade. You know,
when we started on this electronic time sheet idea a number of years ago we had this
high school intern that helped us craft that and, then, he left us for a couple of years and
now he's our college intern, McKay Graybill, and he's been an integral part of getting
this project really started and maintained and moved forward and now enhanced with
the expertise that we have in our software engineer and software developer, the staff
that we have that Mike Tanner heads up, there is a number of different things this
electronic time sheet upgrade is going to do. Expanding to include employees with all
types of schedules. You know, we have a variety of different types of schedules we
have in our policy manual, they call it flex scheduling and have the ability for different
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 21 of 36
departments to allow employees to work the nontraditional not 8:00 to 5:00, Monday
through Friday based on the needs of the city and the department. For example,
recently we met with Steve Siddoway and the Parks Department maintenance has
found that they really got crunched either on overtime or trying to flex people's time,
especially in the wintertime in dealing with snow removal and ice removal and those
types of things with the traditional schedule. So, they looked at coming up with a
modified schedule would make more sense for their needs and for the city's needs and
our electronic time sheet would be able to take those into consideration, because
currently -- under the current system we use everybody who uses an 8:00 to 5:00
schedule can use the electronic time sheet and everyone else has to use a paper time
sheet. So, every time you have paper and people entering it by hand you're going to
have either error, you have to hand calculate all those things, so this upgrade that we
are -- that we have been working on through IT will help address those types of various
schedules and, again, have the same seamless way that we have been doing this
electronically. We will have enhanced reports for supervisors and directors, payroll
administrators, there is a lot of information that we can capture through the time sheet
process that could be of great value to the supervisors in knowing how much time
people have that they can use for time off, other types of things the payroll administrator
needs to know, things that can be added much more seamlessly without, again,
creating more work or making it more time intensive or time consuming to add this data
time. The time sheet can capture that. We looked at redesigning the database and this
is something probably more on the technical side that's going to make it a little bit more
flexibility for IT to help manage with finance and payroll and, then, finally, it integrates
our software or our time sheet with the payroll system and the HR system that we
already have in place. Right now we are desiring that those connections work a little bit
better and we can, again, deal with the various types of schedules, different types of
FLSA requirements for different positions and those kinds of things. All of this time
sheet upgrade I think will be of great value to the city and create a much more seamless
and usable type of system. Also it will address employees' needs. You know, the first
one here, addresses employees' concerns about current time sheets, clear error
messages point to a city policy. We get a lot of questions from folks that don't always
understand how FLSA requirements work, how their time, as they get entered, on what
city policies may apply, so we get a number of calls either to my department or to
payroll saying, well, I entered this and I got this kicked back to me or I don't understand.
We are looking to integrate, basically, the city policies into the time sheets. So, if
someone enters something incorrectly this would be able to, essentially, show them the
policy, explain to them why they have to enter it in a certain way or why it's impacted the
way they were doing something if it was done incorrectly. There is also a payroll
adjustment line for updating past time sheets. Sometimes what will happen is we will
get folks towards the end of the pay period that if the pay period splits within a particular
week they may have some time that's captured on one side of the pay period and, then,
time that's captured in the second half of the pay period in the same week. So, this will
allow us to adjust it without having to hand do it each time, so it will save a lot of staff
time in trying to make this a much better product. It grants a users access to more of
the data. One of the things that IT has done an excellent job over the years is as we
have integrated more information into our database our employees, both for the
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 22 of 36
supervisors, as well as the employees, they have ways to update their personal
information, update their dependents, update any other emergency contacts and things
like that. These, again, can be all captured through the time sheet and there is also
ways, then, for the supervisors to be able to see that information, if there is a need for
the employee to contact someone, if there is an emergency or something like that, there
is a way we can capture that and IT has been a great leader in trying to get that type of
information available for both employees and supervisors. And, last, it will help manage
the cell phone reimbursements. Right now if we reimburse an employee for use of a
cell phone it's given on their paycheck. So, now the employees, when they get this
finalized, the employees will actually be able to see that on their -- on their time sheet
applicable and they will know what their paychecks are supposed to be at the end of the
month if they have a cell phone reimbursement on that. So, those are great additions to
what we have been currently doing and I think, again, it will be a great advantage, both
to the employees and our supervisors. Incident tracking. You know, you have heard a
number of times -- I think we have talked about this. We are pretty proud of this -- this
particular program and Mike Tanner, again, has been -- we have -- if you recall last year
at AIC we won an award from AIC for this program, this incident tracking in the past,
and, you know, I don't have to be the only person telling you about it, I think the police
would tell you how valuable this tool has become for them in being able to track police
reports and putting all the information together, collecting all the information and being
able to transmit a lot of it electronically to both the prosecutor, as well as to the officers
or detectives, whatever the follow up is needed, we think it's been a great addition to
their work and certainly always willing to let them chime in as to how much value that's
been to them and streamlining how the field -- how the reports are done in the field. We
don't know who this person is, this is just something you capture from Idaho Department
of -- driver's license. But, basically, it allows you to auto fill this for officers, they can
track this information by using driver's licenses or vehicle registration, it will, then, auto
fill all the information related to that driver's license number or that vehicle identification
number, so that way they don't have to hand enter everything in to capture all this data.
So, it's a little faster and a little more efficient way of doing things. Again, major benefits
of incident tracking. Paperless routing. You know, we are not always just having to wait
for printed hand routed forms or police reports that go from one basket to another, have
to get transmitted that way, they can be done electronically. Much of the same
information in the past had to be typed in a number of different times by different
people. Obviously, the potential for error exists when you do that. Now the information
tracking makes it seamless for the officers, they can do it once, it will, then, fill all that
information in for them, they don't have to constantly redo it and, then, everything that's
related to the police report, audio, photographs, any scanned documents are now
associated with that particular report. So, again, it does not require one person to have
to constantly manage paper and documents and records, but it really is doing it -- a lot
of that work for them. Before this when -- the prosecuting attorney used to receive a
paper copy, then, they would have to go back and come back and search for the audio
and the photographs and all those other things to find the particular officer and when
was it checked in and when was this booked -- under what number and what date. And
now all this stuff gets collected together as part of this system. So, this is -- we think
this is a great tool and a great opportunity and as it states on here, following reports are
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 23 of 36
now uploaded directly to Ada county as they are approved in the Boise prosecuting
attorney's office is next on that list to have that done. So, those are I think great
benefits that IT I think in working with police and trying to figure out what those needs
are for the police department we are able to create something that really is unique to
Meridian, but also something that can be a very valuable tool in law enforcement.
Accela. We have talked about Accela a number of times. Accela, as you know, was a
company that we selected to help create an integrated software system for the various
varieties of different departmental needs and Rob Sosnowski has been the person
tasked with this project. What Accela does is it's going to help automate work flows,
track different activities from various departments, be able to talk more to one another,
manage data input of the different departments, review, share, and report information
and, then, integrate department information in a centralized location. We found there is
so many different aspects of what we do as a city that are so related, yet in the past
they are either having to be tracked manually, tracked through departmental -- through
different department contacts and those types of things. Obviously, lots of information
gets lost or doesn't get transmitted and we have tried to create databases to help
manage that over the last few years and what we really wanted and what you helped
support was in putting together -- finding a vendor that really could do that for us as a
whole and so this Accela project has really been an ongoing project for awhile and we
will get to that supply. But, basically, what we will end up with is a citywide information
sharing system between, again, various departments, better response time and
approved customer service. Again, the idea is to help create a database to be able to
answer the public's questions ordeal with issues as they come up based on -- whether
it's location, whether it's a particular incident and those types of things, have better
information to be able to provide back to the customer. Again, better decision making
support with -- whether it's code enforcement or some of the other -- the Planning
Department or whatever, has the need for this, we have a better way to get more
information, so, again, better decisions and better information gets transmitted back to
either the department or the customer, integrated with the city GIS. That's probably one
of the critical components of that. You know, many of the things -- and we will talk
about GIS in a second, but many of the things that we do are tied to a particular
location, so part of this project is to help us integrate those locations with the different
things that are relevant to that particular location, whether it's building permits that are
issued, whether it's different planning, CZC's or other planning things -- licenses or
permits that have been issued for those locations -- so that there is better ways, again,
to get that information in one place and, then, it will allow, then, people to either work in
the office and have access to it or those that are out in the field, like code enforcement,
to have more access to that information, so that, again, we can get better information
back to the consumer, to the customer, to the public. The contract we signed with
Accela was right before the end of the last fiscal year in September and our intent is be
able to go live with that by May of this year 2011. So, you will be hearing more of it.
The intent was to bring back more information to you, but I wanted to make you aware
of kind of where we are at with this at this particular point. We are kind of a little bit
more than halfway through. This has been a great participation for the city
departments. Rob's efforts have been tremendous, but the input from the other
departments and the desire to have a collective shared information to be able to, then,
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 24 of 36
work together to sell some of the issues in the past that have been very difficult to
overcome has been a great tool for everyone. Geographic Information Systems or GIS.
I think we all hear the term a lot. We all know that, basically, everything in the world is
tied to someplace on earth and I jokingly said recently that some day we are going to
walk around and we are going to see A's and B's and big giant balloons on every light
post and every street sign out there. It feels like this is everywhere you go anymore has
some kind of balloon that tells you where it is. Well, again, there is a desire to have
some connection with what that is, what's out there. Everything that happens happens
somewhere and knowing where that is is critically important to being able to do
business. You know, we often, again, want to know where is this, what was already
approved there, what belongs there, what's not supposed to be there, those types of
things are vitally important to us in what we do. So, again, the intent is to create a GIS
system that both requires -- that has both the hardware and software and data
components to all those things that would help define workflow, the different processes
that go on for the city. Again, people are the most important component of this and the
network allows the sharing of applications, the sharing of data and dissemination of
information and we have people to integrate both the information and to use the
information and so this GIS project, again, has been an involved project with a number
of different departments and different users in this, is really to help come up with a plan
for the long term use and value to the city. Graphic part here. And the intent is, then,
create a GIS plan this year that will come back to you -- and I don't know if we have a
target, Terry? March. Okay. So, March, April. So, sometime this spring we hope to
have this plan back in front of you that says, basically, we have been involved for over
six years in various aspects of GIS. Along the way work has been done on many
different projects and, again, we have had GIS as part of Public Works for a long time,
we have components of that that are parts of IT, and we have developers that perform
different functions of the GIS components, both for the needs of Public Works, as well
as for the needs of the city as a whole, and so, basically, what the time now is to, then,
look at a GIS plan for the city as a whole. Obviously, there is always going to be needs
in Public Works, but we have talked for a number of years about expanding that use
toward the city as a whole and I think that's our intent and bring all the different
departments together and users together is to be able to then bring a plan to you that's
prioritized the way this plan gets implemented, prioritizes what the needs are and being
able to, then, bring it back to you and if there is, obviously, budgetary impacts and
things like that we can address those with you. What's the purpose of that? Again,
think we have talked about it a number of times, promote data sharing and improve
customer service. Again, it's such a critical component of what we do is being able to
know where things are, what's supposed to be there and what's not supposed to be
there. As you imagine, we probably get a lot of both of these things. Again, reducing
costs. Anything we can do to make it more streamlined and more efficient for the city at
a much more reduced cost in time and effort and administration of the city as well and,
obviously, that provides better --abetter service to our customers. That would, then --
obviously, it creates efficiency and, then, obviously, further our city's mission statement
in providing, you know, the best customer service that we can to our citizens. So, the
GIS team has been meeting since March of last year, so stakeholders from all
departments -- and so far they have identified 68 various projects that would be -- have
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 25 of 36
a GIS component related to it. There is a whole bunch of them here. And as you can
see there is a bunch of different things and whether it's Public Works related, like the
Hansen 8 integration, parks website, crime, street lighting -- we have talked about a
number of different things with street lighting and, basically, help with dealing with crime
prevention, as well as creating a safer environment for the city. Stormwater. Date
addressing. Fire hydrants. I mean we have talked about lots of different components
that GIS can be of value to the city and, therefore, our citizens and so as this project
continues on and trying to get a plan together, like I said, to bring to you this spring --
and, again, the department's intent is is to create, basically, a model where IT -- IT has
the centralized function or responsibility of the application development, that data and
system management to train and support, but each of the departments would perform
others GIS functions. and, as I said, for example, Public Works is always going to have
a specific need that they may be addressing themselves at what they want and, again,
think one of the things we talked about a number of times with you is one of the things
that GIS can be a real valuable tool is creating various maps and different types of
things about different issues or concerns that you may have or departments may have.
Now, again, part of that responsibility is going to be the departments. I mean IT isn't
going to have a map maker that makes maps for every single department in the city, but
the training so the departments can use that information and that database to create the
needs that they have is really the IT's role. So, maintaining the data, providing support
data, providing training to be able to use that, is really going to be part of IT's function.
So, the intent is to bring that back to you sometime this spring. We just wanted you to
know it's still an ongoing project that we still have been working on. The radio
frequency identification project. We have talked about before in the budgetary context
and we have budgeted funds to do this and I think they are still working through that and
creating RFID tags -- all of you know every -- everything of significant value to us has a
tag on it and if you look on the back of your screens there, there is tags on the back of
all of those screens. What we are looking to do, though, is instead of that manual
system that we have had for a number of years and most cities have had for a number
years, require somebody to crawl around on the floor sometimes to go look for it, see if
it's there, make sure that number matches the list numbers that you're supposed to
have to make sure what's there and what isn't there and most of the time it usually tells
you what isn't there. It doesn't usually tell you what's there as much as what you don't
have anymore and sometimes it's gotten missed or gotten moved and we don't know
where it belongs. The intent of this is to, basically, create these radio frequency tags
that attach to that and, basically, can be read by a device, so, basically, the person
doing the inventory can enter the room with the device and it can tell them -- tell the
device which items are here and that can relate back to what's supposed to be here so
that way, again, we are not spending as much time looking for stuff as we have in the
past. So, it streamlines the inventory process. It makes, basically, a consistent method
of both collecting it and reporting what the inventories are and, basically, like I said,
more than anything it really takes the -- the people element out of trying to track every
single item that we have or every single item of value that we have in a manual process.
It creates a much more streamlined and automated process to do that, so that we,
hopefully, again, can keep a better handle on what we have and where it is and where it
belongs, as opposed to where it should be.
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 26 of 36
Hoaglun: Bill, if I might add, it just keeps people from having to crawl around on their
hands and knees looking for that tag that's on that chair somewhere underneath the
desk.
Nary: That is of great value.
Hoaglun: Yes. Yes.
de Weerd: It's not as entertaining.
Nary: So, currently what's going on is the tags are a little bit different looking, they are a
little bit more like a bar code, they are a little bit larger, and, basically, they are in the
process of updating, inputting all of that information and ultimately the goal is is once
that information -- all the proper things get tagged, all the database is created, then,
finance will be in charge of that inventory, because that's really who wants to know, both
from -- both from our asset management, as well as our insurance purposes, having
some way to control that and know what those things are really is -- is critically
important, finance will be the place where that will end up. So, here is a couple things
left. Like I said, update the input data, designate the bar code for each room or location,
and, then, we will again transfer that to finance ultimately. Continuity plan. This is very
-- obviously very critical and we have -- and you have heard us many times mention our
desire to have a continuity plan and to make sure that we have appropriate backup for
the information that we have. We don't want to have, obviously, a major disaster, but if
we have a disaster or we have something of significance that happens to our data, we
want to be able to recreate that data as efficiently, as quickly as possible and so IT,
along with the various departments, are working together to put together a continuity
plan for when disaster strikes we have enough information backed up in the best way
possible in redundancy so that way, again, us getting back up and running is something
that could be done very quickly and much more efficiently. The public isn't going to
accept us just saying, sorry, our computer is crashed, come back next week.
So, the next step in the process is to do a business impact analysis to basically show
how the services can be negatively impacted and how quickly those services need to be
restored with minimal disruption and doing such analysis will help us with -- help us to
define better what the recovery points are that we need and a risk assessment study will
identify what our assets are, how those are affected by the various risks and threats and
vulnerabilities and this will help us plan counter measures for each type of risk and,
then, based upon our business impact analysis and risk assessment we would, then,
develop options and procedures to minimize the impact to our overall business
operation and with the least amount of disruption and, then, after the production
implementation of the continuity or contingency plan it will be necessary to test and
review that. So, you will be hearing more about that from us as we work through those
things, but, again, that's an ongoing project for us and, obviously, that's a significant
impact to the city that we maintain our momentum in that area. We just had a couple of
slides -- everybody likes to have pie charts. I'm sorry. Stacy isn't here. I know she
loves pie charts. We tried to break out a little bit of just the time that was spent on the
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 27 of 36
various different departments and we did this in each of the different areas that we have
today. Here is some of the IT data of the departments' use of IT -- the departments' use
and this is -- what time period, Terry?
Paternoster: I believe that was for the first nine months of --
Nary: 2010?
Paternoster: -- January through end of 2010.
Nary: Okay. So, if you didn't hear that, this is, basically, the time period we captured
between January of 2010 until the end of the fiscal year, so September. So, you can
see, obviously, Public Works and police are -- are big users of time because of the
different types of things that are supported by IT. MUBS after that, because, again, you
can understand the different -- the different types of applications that those three areas
really use and, then, obviously, a little smaller bits and pieces of the other departments,
but, obviously, IT is very involved in the various functions that go on in the city on a daily
basis and this is just a slide to help capture and a little bit for you. Questions before
move on to the next section?
de Weerd: No. I just -- our thanks to the IT staff and I would say if Terry gave this
report he would have been done ten minutes ago.
Nary: I would agree. It's legal, so here is our -- here is our org chart for legal. Again,
we have a vacancy as well. We have an office assistant position that's currently vacant
and we are looking for applications for that position currently. So, what different things
do we do? Now, these ones -- most of you know you have probably seen these more
visibly than some of the things that we have talked about with IT. Lassie's law, we are,
obviously, very engaged with that. The Mayor's office, the youth council, are very --
were avery big initiative of both the Mayor's office and the youth council at bringing the
texting while driving law to fruition. Our department -- or our legal staff was very integral
in getting that done. Solid Waste Advisory Commission, bringing that from a committee
to a commission now, was a lot of work in putting together that ordinance this past year.
We did a lot of sign updates and a lot of sign codes, worked with the planning
department on mobile sales unit. We worked very closely with the clerk's office in
making sure that the codes are updated in relation to that and help and assist them in
providing that licensing and permitting for that. Abandoned vehicles. There is a new
state code that was put into place by the legislature last year. My staff worked closely
with the code enforcement or the police department in implementing the process that
the state put into place, so that we could deal with abandoned vehicles out in our
community. Animal control. Talked a lot about dogs off leash. We talked a lot about
animals out in our community. We had some ordinances that we brought back in front
of you this last fall in relation to that. Smoking, both nonsmoking as we talked about like
in the parks and that's still pending before you, but also smoking in the private
businesses, we implemented an ordinance last year that allowed businesses to post
their premises as no smoking and had the force of ordinance behind that as well, that if
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 28 of 36
people didn't want to obey them that the property owner didn't -- isn't just stuck with
evicting the person, but, actually, the person could be cited for smoking where it's been
-- it's been noticed not to. Spice we all talked about a lot. Spice is something that we
appear to the moment have erased from our community. I think the City of Meridian,
with the Mayor's office as well, helped really lead this area in dealing with Spice and
getting rid of that from our community. Board of adjustments. This is the one near and
dear to the Mayor's heart. This is the board of appraisers that we converted over to the
board of adjustment. That was, again, another opportunity for a citizen involvement as
well. The previous board did not have a citizen. Now this board does have a citizen
member as well. So, another opportunity for a citizen volunteer to be a part of a city
board. Temporary uses again, through the clerk's office and dealing whether it's
fireworks stands, whether it's Christmas tree lots or any other temporary uses. Again,
my staff has been very involved in making sure our ordinances are up to date and
dealing with whatever the current law is. Parking as well, we have addressed a number
of different parking issues around the city. A lot of ordinance change in regard to that.
We -- also we updated our weed ordinance last year. Again, another thing that can
become a real eye sore and a problem in our community, as well as disorderly premises
and trying to address the various needs that we have with those. I think our office has
been very integral in getting, again, our code updated from the '50s and '60s -- some of
our city codes were stuck into something more modern and more consistent with the
current law. Internal process updates and training. Bankruptcy. As you imagine, we
have talked about this a little bit. As you imagine with the economic climate over the
last couple years bankruptcy has become a very significant part of what we do. We
deal with a lot of bankruptcy issues. In fact, we just today got notice about a bankruptcy
issue that -- not totally sure what our response is going to be yet, but it's in relationship
to DBSI's bankruptcy and so we are not totally sure, we will get more information about
that and bring that back to you, but there is significant impact of bankruptcy in our
community and we have had to address that in helping both utility billing and dealing
with those types of issues, as well as some other departments, building services, for
example.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
de Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: If I would clarify the record -- for the record if I may. The City of Meridian is
not anywhere near bankruptcy --
Nary: No.
Zaremba: -- this is issues that relate to other people's bankruptcy.
Nary: Yes. Absolutely, Council Member Zaremba. This is other people in the
community filing bankruptcy who owe us money or have owed us money or have paid
us money and now are being adjudicated in the bankruptcy court. So, yeah.
Absolutely. So, sorry I didn't make that clear. Public records request -- I think the
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 29 of 36
clerk's office -- and my staff can attest -- public records request is a booming business
anymore. We have a lot of folks -- and as you all know, the public records law is very
specific of what you can release and what you can't, what you can ask people and what
you can't. How to clarify what exactly people want and you find many people that aren't
just looking for public records that I think the legislature thinks they are, where they are
just looking for a record about some particular incident or some particular circumstance,
so, really, people that are looking at it as a business opportunity and looking for public
records as a means to enhance a business. A recent public records request that we
have had are from businesses that look for checks that are outstanding that have been
owed, that have not been cashed beyond six months where banks won't honor those
checks anymore and that business will, then, contact those people to say we can go get
your check reissued for you for a fee. Now, we would probably reissue the check
anyway, I don't think we need someone to do that, but I mean that's a business
opportunity -- certainly they are not only asking us, they are asking other entities for the
same information, because that's a way they could, essentially, create a business
opportunity for them. So, you see very creative ways that of people using public
records requests that are not what I would have seen five years ago or ten years ago.
Permitting and licensing. Again, I think the clerk's office can attest and my staff can
attest the permitting and licensing is a huge business and it is -- it does take a
tremendous amount of time and, again, I think it's an area that the City of Meridian does
really well and is very much a leader in this valley or ways that we -- one, are trying to
address the needs that the law requires that we address and also address our citizens
concerns that exist out there, but also make sure we are complying with what the law
allows us to do and not to do. And so our staff is very engaged with the clerk's office on
this particular issue and I think, again, I think it's an integral part of what we do and
think we, again, are very much a leader in our community in this area. MPD K9 facility.
This is the -- this is the police training facility, so it's not the shelter. We are talking
about the K9 facility. Our staff was very involved with the police department and being
able to put agreements together so we would allow other agencies to use our dog
training -- or dog training facility either for training or for housing their -- their animals on
occasion and putting together a very simple contractual form that the different cities
could use so that, again, it was a little bit more formalized in how we do things. You
know lawyers, we love formality, it's always a little bit better for us, so -- building code
enforcement, again, I think it's an area, as you well know, if you don't pay attention to
code enforcement your public will pay attention for you and it does matter to them
greatly that we are vigilant in dealing with -- whether it's signs, whether it's weeds,
whether it's people erecting illegal structures, people operating businesses without
licensing or permitting, we have been very vigilant in dealing with that from the most
minor thing of warning folks about what the requirements are to actually shutting
people's power off and closing down their business until they meet the proper safety
standards so that they aren't a life safety issue to people. And all of those things take
time and effort, both from building services and code enforcement, the police
department, for my staff, to make sure, one, we are meeting what the law allows us to
do, as well as what our codes allow us to do. The parks and recreation facility use --
again, we are very, very -- we were very much a hot commodity in this area, because of
the improvement in our parks and the improvement in our facility for people to be able to
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 30 of 36
use. So, my staff is very engaged with the parks department on making sure that we
have the right contracts that are in place and making sure the city is protected and that
our taxpayers are not at risk for other people's damage or other people's injuries on our
property and so we get very, very engaged with those different things. And, lastly, the
secondary employment. This is an issue that was near and dear to Chief Lavey's heart
for officers at the police department that had to forego opportunities in secondary
employment, whether it's providing weekend security at a Lowe's or at RC Willey,
because our policies didn't allow that. There are ways a police officer can do that. Or
other -- they can perform other type of secondary employment that aren't going to be an
impact to the city and we just want to make sure that there is some clarity as to when
they are a police officer and when they are not a police officer and when they are within
the course and scope of their job and when they are not and that way we can work with
the police chief to provide, again, an opportunity for our officers that many of them have
been seeking for a number of years. Litigation. Nobody likes to talk about litigation very
much, so I'm not going to talk about it very much. You know we have a case that's
ongoing and the one that we have been waiting a little bit or the Supreme Court as a
case we were successful at the district court level. The appeal to the Supreme Court
we are just waiting for that to be set for hearing and we are still waiting on them. The
Supreme Court has their own time table, they can do what they want when they want,
so we haven't got the date set as of yet for that appeal. We have the EEOC, that's
another case that's ongoing that you're aware of as well. We are still working through
the early stages of litigation with that and, then, the courthouse which you know, again,
has gotten a little bit of notoriety and it's another case that we are working through the
issues with that and I'm sure you will hear more about it, but we probably won't hear
more about it here. You may hear about it -- more about it. Statutory compliance,
oversight, and training. Again, my staff, myself, and all of them get heavily involved in a
variety of different compliance, oversight, and training, whether it's public records
request that's an ongoing thing that we deal with, whether it's building code updates, fee
changes -- again, we have -- constantly have to, you know, re-educate the public about
fees and how those are adopted and make sure we follow the requirements of the
statue on when we adopt new fees or change the fees. Open Meetings Act. We have
been doing training with all of our commissions on open meeting and what requirements
are allowed for commissions and what are not allowed for commissions and how they
do things. I have another one this week with Planning and Zoning and I think we have
one left after that and I think we have covered all of our commissions. And included in
that Open Meetings Act we deal with governmental ethics. We get a lot questions in
regard for what can I do or can't I do and so we do try to make sure we include that in all
of our trainings as well, because, again, the statutes are -- in Idaho are very specific
about commissioners even as to what business arrangements or engagements we
could have with the different commissions or what the commissioners can be in a
business relationship with the city. As so helping educate our commissioners about that
is very important to us. These are various contracts that we have been involved with
over the last year, year and a half or so. I won't go through all of them, but, obviously,
we have dealt with different things, whether it's utility hook-ups -- we had the Chief
Joseph artists and residents, the children's theater is an ongoing thing. You see
monthly the Initial Point gallery rotating display, it's a different contract that we have with
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 31 of 36
different artists for that. Concerts on Broadway. All these various things that -- anyway,
again, we try very hard to make it look easy, but, you know, we take a tremendous
amount of pride in what we do and the time we do to make it look well, so that you folks
have all the right stuff in front of you when you hear it and that's why we take 67 percent
of our time in legal to address your concerns and the commission's concerns. It's a lot
of time and effort, but, I'll tell you it's effort well spent, because you don't have to worry
when you come to -- come to your Council meeting that it hasn't been reviewed, it hasn't
been looked at, the departments we haven't met about it, we haven't discussed, we
haven't addressed this -- you don't have to be as concerned that you may have had to
be ten years ago that whether or not there was the time or the opportunity to have done
that. We are here to spend this time to make sure that you have the right information in
front of you every Tuesday or for the commissions when they meet that they have all
the information in front of them for them to be able to make the right decision. And,
finally, human resources. Human recourses staff -- we have -- Crystal Ritchie is our HR
manager. We made the change this year. Crystal is doing a great job with our staff and
with our two Erins that we have on our staff. It's a little confusing for folks that they are
both named Erin, but they will get used to it. Erin Montemurro is our HR generalist and
she's been a great addition to our group in helping departments as we go through, we
do a lot of hiring and Erin has been very engaged with that in helping departments with
the various hiring opportunities that we have for city and, then, Erin Lammers -- you
know, she came right into the middle of the fire. You know, she's our benefits support
coordinator and she's there to help administer all the employee benefits and she came
right during open enrollment, so you couldn't find a better time to say here you go, here
is how this works and she has also done a great job there with the employees and being
able to connect with them and help them understand what benefits they have and what
works for them and what they need to do. So, benefits administration. We did 15 open
enrollment meetings, we had a 98 percent completion rate. We had a couple of
employees that were out that we did some follow up with and Crystal did a good job of
making sure everybody got their paperwork in on time as they needed it, did a lot of
follow up to make sure those were done. Basically, different departmental HR needs.
We recruited for 40 positions in the last year, including one director position. We had 33
employees that separated, 12 that were involuntary, 17 voluntary, two retired and two
that were completed projects -- those were our interns in IT is the ones that are
classified as complete a project. That does include seasonal. So, seasonal, as you're
all aware of in the parks department that work in our various rec programs, et cetera,
and that's not included in the separating of employees, because we -- you know, we
hired them knowing that there is a limited time period for them to be here. So, we had,
essentially, almost a 91 percent retention rate of employees, which we are vary proud of
and that's because I think we are a good place to work. I think we are a good place to
be and we provide good wages and we provide good benefits for people and so I think
that's a real value to our community to have for people that continue to stay. We don't
want to lose folks. We really want the best people to be here and the way to retain
good people is to do things that I think we have been doing and that maintain that
continuity and that institutional knowledge, which I think is of greater value to the city.
This is our wellness program. Our wellness program has truly grown and it's really
become an integral part of the culture I think of our employees and more and more as
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 32 of 36
they get educated about what's available I think employees really truly find value and
really see that, obviously, the city cares greatly about them enough to want to provide
these different opportunities for them to be a part of. Wellness incentive program. This
is one that we brought forward to all the directors and this is one where employees can
actually sign up and they receive points for various different types of wellness activities
and the wellness activities might be things like Kettle Bell classes that we offer here on
site at City Hall. We have healthy eating brown bag seminars monthly. We try to have
at least one a month, sometimes we have the opportunity to have two. We also have
yoga classes. We have had Palates. The Pilates instructor left, we are looking for
another type of activity class that we can provide for folks. People get points for
participating or if they do the healthy -- or, excuse me, the wellness check where they
get their blood tested and they can actually meet with a nurse with St. Luke's to see
what the current state of her health is. They get points for that. They will get points for
participating in different things. As they accumulate a certain number of points, then,
the employee can actually earn a day off as their incentive to participate in those
different things. We have different values of these different classes for them. So, those
are things that are great incentive for folks to participate in and we are -- what we are
looking to expand the program over the course of the next year is to, then, maybe
provide community events that people can participate in to get points, whether it's Relay
For Life or Race For The Cure or something that the city wants to sponsor a team or the
city wants to promote that as a city event, then, again, if you want to participate in that,
then, people can get pointed towards the incentive program. Employees were very
excited about this opportunity and we found time off was something people really
cherished. We did a survey of employees and we talked about everything from gift
cards to T-shirts to a variety of different things and time off for people to be able to do
things on their own, with their own family, was by far the number one desired outcome.
And so that's what we decided in this group that we would provide that opportunity for
folks and, again, try to marry up the wellness incentive with -- with that desire for people
that have time off to do the things they want to do with their families. Workers
compensation. Again, it's not something we really like to talk about, but it's something
we do have to do from a statutory compliance. We had 45 reports processed over the
last year, so it may sound like alot -- out of 350 employees that's a fairly small number
when you add up on top of that seasonal workers, 45 is a fairly small number relative to
the amount of employees we have. So, we are pretty encouraged that we, I think, are
doing the right thing as an organization to limit employees injuries and to limit people
getting hurt on the job and missing work because of getting hurt on the job. We did a
360 degree feedback program. This is the Mayor's initiative wanting to get better
understanding of how people were doing their job and so we did it -- we created an
automated process through HR, we evaluated both leadership and, then, the different
department directors could select different personnel in their department to get
feedback and what we did was we basically surveyed folks that both the employee
might select, three or four people, as well as the supervisor may select three or four
people, to give us an honest assessment of how that employee does their job and how
they interact with folks and how they perform and provide customer service in the
various aspects of what they do. We found it to be pretty successful. I mean I don't
think we had any real revelations in it. I think what we found was we think people are
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 33 of 36
doing as well as we think, but it was a different way to provide insight to both the
supervisors or to the Mayor as to how people were performing and we really liked it and
I think we want to continue doing that. We are going to refine that a little bit in this
coming year to make it a more valuable tool for everybody, but we think it's a process
and a program that could be of great assistance both to the Mayor and the various
directors to be able to assess how people are doing and give them honest feedback on
how they are being viewed. You know, they are not always the best -- you're not always
great at assessing yourself as you think you are and you're not always great at thinking
how everybody sees you as you think you are and so this is a great tool to be able to
see those things from a different perspective than we have before. Employee
development path program -- again, this is a training program. We have had various
discussions with you over the last few years and this is really Crystal's -- Crystal's baby
in putting this together to create a training assessment, as well as opportunities for
employees to have real development to have varieties of different training that it's going
to suit their needs and their department's needs to help make our employees better --
better educated, better trained, have better tools to be able to perform their job better
and this development path program I think is going to be a great value and, again, I
think it's going to change our culture of our employee workforce, but, again, our
employees can see what the city cares about them and want them to be great
employees and wanting them to have the right tools to do their job and wanting them to
really feel valued and respected in what they do. This is some of the time in HR that we
spent on various things and it's got recruitment, administration, employee relations --
obviously there is different areas that we address. This is, basically, a little snapshot of
last year as well. And, again, by the different departments as well a little snapshot of
the different time the -- the other category is pretty large, because sometimes we have
folks as we try to categorize different functions may categorize it by either function or
departments, so those we sort of put into the other category, so over the next year we
are going to refine that a little bit better, so we can capture the data a little better, but,
obviously, you can see where a lot of our time is spent on the various departments.
And that's our update. Again, I'm very proud to work here for the city and I'm very proud
to work with the people I work with every day, you know, they -- they work very hard and
we do a lot of things with not a lot of people, but I think we provide great value to our
citizens by what we do and I think in the city we have tried to get value to our other
fellow employees by things that we do in our department to make this a better place to
be, to make their jobs a little bit better, to make their environment a little bit better for
them and, again, I'm very proud to work with all of the folks that are here tonight and I'll
stand for questions.
de Weerd: Thank you, Bill. Council, any questions?
Bird: Very good. Very good, Bill.
Nary: Thank you.
de Weerd: Thank you.
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 34 of 36
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
de Weerd: And thank you to your team that came to -- that had your back tonight. Mr.
Zaremba.
Zaremba: I was just going to comment that that was very thorough and anticipated the
questions and answered them before they were asked and I would like to share in
appreciating the staff and all the great work that you do. Thank you.
Hoaglun: And, Madam Mayor, just a comment that, you know, a lot of times we work
with legal quite closely, because as you saw from the slide there is a lot of things that
we need legal's help on and so it's like IT and HR kind of the quiet folks out there, but,
you know, there is benefit to that, because that means the problems aren't coming to us.
I mean they are being taken care of, things are worked out, and life goes on for
everyone in the city, because they are handling it and managing it and it doesn't rise to
this level, which I appreciate, you know. That's a great thing. So, we appreciate the
work that you do out there.
de Weerd: And that's the theory about Public Works, too. You kind of hope that
hearing nothing means good things. Same with HR and IT. So, thank you all for being
here. And certainly for legal, too. We just haven't had the same luck in that regard. But
thank you for being here. We certainly appreciate everything you do. You're definitely a
class service that we have both internally and externally. Appreciate you.
Item 9: Ordinances
A. Ordinance No. 11-1470: An Ordinance (RZ 10-007 Meridian
Police Department) For The Re-Zone Of A Parcel Of Land
Located In The N '/2 Of The SE '/4 Of The NE '/4 Of Section 18,
Township 3 North, Range 1 East, And Being Lot 8 Of Block 2
Of Murdock Subdivision No. 2 As Shown In Book 83 Of Plats
At Page 9158 In The Office Of The Recorder, Ada County,
Idaho; Establishing And Determining The Land Use Zoning
Classification Of 9.33 Acres Of Land From The R-8 (Medium
Density Residential District) Zoning District To The C-G
(General Retail And Service Commercial District) Zoning
District In The Meridian City Code; And Providing An Effective
Date
de Weerd: Okay. Council, we will move to Item 9, which is ordinances. Madam Clerk,
will you, please, read this ordinance 11-1470 by title only.
Jones: Thank you, Madam Mayor. An ordinance RZ 10-007, Meridian Police
Department, for the rezone of a parcel of land located in the north half of the southeast
quarter of the northeast quarter of Section 18, Township 3 North, Range 1 East, and
being Lot 8 of Block 2 of Murdock Subdivision No. 2, as shown in Book 83 of Plats at
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 35 of 36
page 9,158 in the office of the Recorder, Ada county, Idaho, as described in Attachment
A and annexing certain lands and territories 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 9.33
acres of land from the R-8, Medium Density Residential District -- Zoning District to the
C-G, General Retail and Service Commercial District -- Zoning District, in the Meridian
City Code, providing that copies of this ordinance shall be filed with the Ada county
assessor, the Ada county recorder, the Idaho State Tax Commission, as required by
law, providing for a summary of the ordinance and providing for a waiver of the reading
of rules and providing an effective date.
de Weerd: Thank you. You have all heard that exciting reading of that title for that
ordinance. Is there anyone who would like it heard in its entirety? Seeing none,
Council, do I have a motion?
Bird: Madam Mayor?
de Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we approve ordinance number 11-1470 with suspension of rules.
Zaremba: Second.
de Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve Item 9-A. If there is no discussion,
Madam Clerk, will you, please, call roll.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, absent; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
de Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
de Weerd: We have three students who have actually sat from the very beginning of
this meeting to the very end. I do have a City of Meridian pin for the three of you, so
with that said, Council, I would entertain a motion to adjourn.
Bird: So moved.
Hoaglun: Second.
de Weerd: All those in favor say aye. All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 7:47 P.M.
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 11, 2011
Page 36 of 36
(AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS)
~~~~~~
MAYOR MMY De WEERD
\\\\,,,1,11111 ~,,,,,/~
~~~$~',,
SEAL _EE
~ ~~M
.,,~ ~ `o \`\~,
~''%,, c~UNTY ~ ~~ti,~•
//l!1f111:1 11441\\\.
DATE APPROVED
CITY CLERK