2011-04-12E IDIAN~
IDAHO
CITY COUNCIL WORKSHOP
MEETING AGENDA
Tuesday, April 12, 2011 at 6:00 PM
1. Roll-Call Attendance
David Zaremba Brad Hoaglun
Charlie Rountree Keith Bird
Mayor Tammy de Weerd
2. Pledge of Allegiance By Ryan Price of Scout Troop #140 (Pg. 1)
3. Adoption of the Agenda (Pg. 1-2)
4. Consent Agenda (Pg. 2-3)
A. Development Agreement for Approval: AZ 08-007 The Shops at Victory by
DMG-Eagle & Victory, LLC Located at 3210 S. Eagle Road: Request for
Annexation and Zoning of 4.79 Acres from RUT (Ada County) to C-C Zoning
District
B. Approval of New Beer License for Meridian BBQ LLC, dba Dickey's BBQ
Pit; located at 2845 E. Overland Rd. Beer License Expiration Date: 4/30/11
C. Approval of 2012 Beer, Wine, Liquor License Renewals as follows:
Firehouse Pub & Grill 1767 W. Franklin Rd. B/W/L
127 Club 127 E. Idaho B/VV/L
The New Frontier 116 E Broadway B/W/L
Famous Daves 3510 Eagle Rd. B/W/L
Schooners 499 S. Main B/W/L
Epi's A Basque Restaurant 1115 N. Main St. B/VV
Pinnacle Sports Grill 2902 Eagle Rd. B/VV/L
Corona Village 21 E. Fairview Ave. B/VV/L
St. Lukes Regional Med. Ctr. 520 S. Eagle Rd. B/VV
Piehole 726 Main St. B
The Griddle 2310 E. Overland Rd. # 132 B/W
Harry's Meridian Grill 2032 E. Overland Rd. #125 B/VV/L
Smoky Mountain Pizzeria Grill 980 E. Fairview Ave. B/VV
Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda -Tuesday, April 12, 2011 Page 1 of 3
All materials presented at public meetings shall become property of the City of Meridian.
Anyone desiring accommodation for disabilities related to documents and/or hearing,
please contact the City Clerk's Office at 888-4433 at least 48 hours prior to the public meeting.
D. Approval of Award of Bid for Grit Classifier Equipment to WesTech
Engineering and Authorizing Purchasing Manager to Issue and Sign a
Purchase Order/Contract in the Amount Not-to-Exceed $48,008.00
E. Task Order No. 10232 (Master Agreement Dated April 13, 2010) with Murray,
Smith and Associates, Inc. for Water Supply Planning for aNot-to-Exceed
Amount of $128,340.00
5. Community Items/Presentations (Pg.3-11)
A. Ada County Highway District (ACRD) Project Priority Process Presentation
6. Items Moved From Consent Agenda
7. Action Items
A. Public Hearing: Proposed Spring/Summer 2011 Fee Schedule of the
Meridian Parks & Recreation Department (Pg.11-12)
B. Resolution No. A Resolution Adopting the
Spring/Summer 2011 Fee Schedule of .the Meridian Parks & Recreation
Department; Authorizing the Meridian Parks & Recreation Department to
Collect Such Fees; and Providing an Effective Date (Pg.12-13)
8. Department Reports
A. Finance Department: Strategic Plan Update Including Discussion on the
Budget and Investment Policy (Pg.13-27)
B. Continued from April 5, 2011 -Planning Department: Cost Share and
License Agreements with Ada County Highway District (ACRD) for the
Landscaping and Maintenance Associated with the Ustick, Duane to
Campton and the Franklin, Ten Mile to Linder Roadway Projects (Pg. 27-28)
C. Public Works: Surety Presentation (Pg. 28-49)
D. Public Works: New Street Lights for School Walk Routes (Pg. 49-55)
E. Public Works: Discussion on Proposed Master License Agreement with
Ada County Highway District for Regulation of Downtown Sidewalk Areas
(Pg. 55-58)
F. Mayor's Office: Budget Amendment for Mayor's Office Internship for aNot-
to-Exceed Amount of $2,775.00 (Pg. 58-59)
Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda -Tuesday, April 12, 2011 Page 2 of 3
All materials presented at public meetings shall become property of the City of Meridian.
Anyone desiring accommodation for disabilities related to documents and/or hearing,
please contact the City Clerk's Office at 888-4433 at least 48 hours prior to the public meeting.
9. Ordinances
A. Ordinance No. AZ 08-007 The Shops at Victory
by DMG-Eagle & Victory, LLC Located at 3210 S. Eagle Road: Request for
Annexation and Zoning of 4.79 Acres from RUT (Ada County) to C-C
(Community Business) Zoning District (Pg. 60)
10. Future Meeting Topics (Pg. 60)
Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda -Tuesday, April 12, 2011 Page 3 of 3
All materials presented at public meetings shall become property of the City of Meridian.
Anyone desiring accommodation for disabilities related to documents and/or hearing,
please contact the City Clerk's Office at 888-4433 at least 48 hours prior to the public meeting.
Meridian City Council Meeting April 12, 2011
A meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 1:04 p.m., Tuesday, April
12, 2011, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd.
Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, Brad Hoaglun, David Zaremba, Keith Bird
and Charlie Rountree.
Others Present: Bill Nary, Jaycee Holman, Warren Stewart, Pete Friedman, John
Overton, Stacy Kilchenmann, Allison Kaptein, 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: Well, good evening. I'd like to welcome you all to tonight's City Council
meeting. For the record it is Tuesday, April 2nd. It's 6:00 o'clock. We will start with roll
call attendance.
Item 2: Pledge of Allegiance by Ryan Price Scout Troop #140
De Weerd: Item No. 2 is our Pledge of Allegiance. Tonight we are honored to be led by
Ryan Price of Scout Troop No. 140.
(Pledge of Allegiance recited.)
De Weerd: Ryan, I would like to present you a City of Meridian pin and thank you for
being with us tonight.
Item 3: Adoption of the Agenda •
De Weerd: Item No. 3 is adoption of the agenda.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Just a couple items to note on tonight's agenda. Under Action Items, 7-B,
that resolution number is 11-780. And under Ordinances, 9-A, that ordinance number is
11-1480. And with those two, Madam Mayor, I move adoption of the agenda.
Rountree: Second.
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 2 of 61
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: ALL AYES.
Item 4: Consent Agenda
A. Development Agreement for Approval: AZ 08-007 The Shops at
Victory by DMG-Eagle & Victory, LLC Located at 3210 S. Eagle
Road: Request for Annexation and Zoning of 4.79 Acres from
RUT (Ada County) to C-C Zoning District
B. Approval of New Beer License for Meridian BBQ LLC, dba
Dickey's BBQ Pit; located at 2845 E. Overland Rd. Beer
License Expiration Date: 4130111
C. Approval of 2012 Beer, Wine, Liquor License Renewals as
follows:
Firehouse Pub & Grill 1767 W. Franklin Rd. BIWIL
127 Club 127 E. Idaho BIWIL
The New Frontier 116 E Broadway BIWIL
Famous Daves 3510 Eagle Rd. BIWI L
Schooners 499 S. Main BNVIL
Epi's A Basque Restaurant 1115 N. Main St. BMI
Pinnacle Sports Grill 2902 Eagle Rd. BNVIL
Corona Village 21 E. Fairview Ave. BIW1L
St. Lukes Regional Med. Ctr. 520 S. Eagle Rd. BMI
Piehole 726 Main St. B
The Griddle 2310 E. Overland Rd. # 132 BIVU
Harry's Meridian Grill 2032 E. Overland Rd. #125 BIVIIIL
Smoky Mountain Pizzeria Grill 980 E. Fairview Ave. BIW
D. Approval of Award of Bid for Grit Classifier Equipment to
WesTech Engineering and Authorizing Purchasing Manager to
Issue and Sign a Purchase OrderlContract in the Amount Not-
to-Exceed $48,008.00
E. Task Order No.10232 (Master Agreement Dated April 13, 2010)
with Murray, Smith and Associates, Inc. for Water Supply
Planning for aNot-to-Exceed Amount of $128,340.00
De Weerd: Item 4, our Consent Agenda.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 3 of 61
Hoaglun: There were no changes to the Consent Agenda, so I move approval of the
Consent Agenda and the Mayor to sign and Clerk to attest.
Rountree: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the Consent Agenda. If there is
no discussion by Council, Madam Clerk, roll call.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 5: Community ItemslPresentations
A. Ada County Highway District (ACRD) Project Priority Process
Presentation
De Weerd: Item 5 is our Community Presentations. Tonight we have on our agenda
Sabrina Anderson with ACRD to present the project priority process. Pass the thumb
drive. Welcome, Sabrina.
Anderson: Thank you. I took the freeway and I am glad now that it's not ourfacility.
Rountree: It's a nice parking lot, isn't it?
Anderson: It was. Sabrina Anderson, manager of the planning and programming
department, ACRD. I don't usually drive the freeway home. I do live in Meridian and
am forever grateful right now. But I was headed to my presentation, so that's lucky.
De Weerd: Well, thank you for joining us this evening.
Anderson: Thank you for having us. I do have some presents. You have a hard copy
until they get that up. All right. Now, we are moving. We have got the -- passed the
thumb drive. Thank you very much. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. So, now we
are ready to go. I appreciate this chance to come and tell you a little bit about our five
year work plan and our programming and prioritization processes. I know some of you
know more about this than others, so I will kind of just gauge on how much you know
and the questions if you have it. We already just adopted our last five year work plan in
the end of February and that's what I just passed out. I know many of you are familiar
with the projects that we have in Meridian, so I won't dwell as much on that, but I did
pass you out your very own five year work plan, so if constituents have questions you
will be able to know the status of the projects or you can ask Caleb, because he
probably has them memorized. The biggest change from the last probably 18 months is
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 4 of 61
the addition of our community -- citizen's advisory community group and that really is by
nature designed around the Citizen's Investment Corporation, CI CIC. Works with our
CIP, which his our acronym. You're familiar with the CIP as our long-term plan, a 20
year plan. The five year work plan is really ourfive year plan. So, what I'm going to do
today is walk you through the different plans and how projects come to be. So,
prioritization process. You have probably gotten bits and pieces of that over time, but I
wanted to lay out for you how they will flow together and where the city's process is in
that and where you can give input. And, then, questions at the end. If I can work the
fancy screen. Okay. So, we are going to talk about a short meeting and long-term
planning document. The five year work plan that we just adopted. And, then, go to any
questions we might have. So, where do projects come from. I'm going to pass you a
little handout here. This is something I'm just going to leave with you. I do have one for
the clerk as well. What I just passed out and we .can put up on the website afterwards,
is how those projects enter our five year work plan or our capital improvements plan,
which is our 20 year project. Essentially, this is the interaction between the city's
Comprehensive Plan and the transportation agencies. And up at the top this is a flow
chart. Up at the top it is the city's Comprehensive Plans and your land use decisions
and those go into the COMPASS regional transportation demand model. And I know
many of you who are are involved with COMPASS know that we are going to be going
through a major update now for our 2014 COMPASS plan and that is where your land
use decisions feed into that plan. Those land use decisions, then, get adopted by the
COMPASS board, which elected officials from all the jurisdictions sit on and that
establishes what is needed for a transportation system. And that -- that's how projects
are identified in the ACRD CIP and our five year work plan comes out of our CIP is that
at the regional view. So, of course, the city involvement happens both at what happens
at COMPASS, but, then, also what happens in our CIP and we are going to talk a little
bit more about that here in a second. But that is where the land use feeds into the
Comprehensive Plans, feeds into the COMPASS regional document. And right in the
middle in the yellow is how the transportation agencies take that original plan and make
it into transportation projects. As that goes down further you can see how our five year
work plan becomes updated yearly and feeds back into the actual projects. So, down
about three-fourths the way down you can see that out of the five year work plan
becomes the new design, the right of way and the construction phases. So, it, then,
loops back around to being accepted in the CIP and the next update of our COMPASS
plan. So, a lot of times people ask, well, does land use start or does transportation start
and it's more of actually a cycle that .goes through the COMPASS board and the
COMPASS long range plan. So, this is just something that we use and I just wanted
you to see, especially as we were going into our COMPASS update, that you can see
how land use and transportation have to be linked into that cycle to be able to establish
our deficiencies list. Any questions with that? Okay. I think you guys are involved with
that more deeply than others. So, this is just an example of how our CIP is a 20 year
plan. And to go into a five year work plan was actually seven years. I find that a little bit
ironic. But the last two years is actually what we call PD or preliminary development.
Kind of a holding pattern of projects where if they have design or right of way in funded
years, will have the construction or PD or preliminary development so that it can feed
into the funded years of the plan. And, then, we have our budget. Our budget is
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011.
Page 5 of 61
actually a two year budget and it's where the first year of the five year work plan
becomes the -- I'm sorry. The first year of the five year work plan becomes the first year
of our budget. And so what we do is we will take 2012, for example, is the first year of
the five year work plan. We will take that, update it for any cost estimates or any
schedule updates, and it will become the first year of our budget. And I will show you in
a second where the cities have the opportunities to comment on those and that's reall
. Y
important to when you understand that when you're commenting outside your work plan
it becomes the budget the very next year. So, I wanted to stop here and just tell a bit
about what the guiding principles are. The projects historically through the last
prioritization processes -- I would say before Sabrina, before there was a real
prioritization process and that was prior to me even working there, projects were
historically more based on the Commission -- commissioner advocacy or staff just being
aware of problems. And that still can happen to a certain degree. But that's how
projects come into the process, rather than how projects get funded. Prioritization was
intended to de-politicize some of that and to really give more of methods that could be
documented. The recent methods were developed with partner jurisdiction. I think
most of you were aware that we now have our CI CIC and you have two members on
that, you have a planning director -- in this case it's Caleb, the planning manager, and
you have a citizen that has been appointed. I know you have two newer member of
your CI CIC and the new prioritization is both technical and community factors and we
are actually going to be just revisiting this next Monday to see how the CI CIC liked the
first round -- this is the first year we actually used the new one. So, going back to our
long, medium, and short arranged, the CIP is for 20 years. It sets our impact fees. It's
really not a complete CIP in the way the city would think about this. I worked at a city
for seven years and so when I first came into it I thought a CIP was more of a complete
what are all your needs and you lay it out and it's fiscally constrained. The CIP is really
only the capital increase to serve new development. It doesn't take all of our funding
sources into account. There are a variety of issues that are being looked at right now
and you do have an active -- two active members on the CI CIC, with Caleb actually
chairing that group. So, a lot of issues are being looked at from, you know, areas to
what are the CIP is going to be used for. There is a lot of issues that you can now be
commenting on before we develop the new CIP that's going to come into effect in
October of 2012. So, I just mention this and if there is questions, you know, Gary is
your liaison, is always available to ask questions -- answer questions and he's more in
detail than I am. But I just bring this up, because the CI CIC is looking at all sorts of
issues and this is the time to be involved with that. So, the five year work plan is
actually the seven years or the new -- the closest years to us where projects get
developed and we are working this year, as part of our CIP the next year, there is a
closer linkage to, you know, the CIP. CIP works in five year increments developing
when projects are needed -- of pulling closer years out of the CIP that fall into the five
year work plan. In our five year work plan it is fiscally constrained and it does include
roads, intersections, bridges -- and you can read there of all the things it includes. It
includes more than just impact fee eligibility. So, it includes our General Fund, it
includes community programs, it includes our vehicle registration fees, it includes all of
our funding sources. So, it's different in that sense. And, again, what I have done is I
have put in blue along here ways that cities and our partner jurisdictions can comment
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 6 of 61
on it through the CI CIC or through your request~list. So, the budget -- that's our two
year cycle. The first year being the five year work plan. That's our starting point. We
revise it as we get revenue estimates and cost updates. The CI CIC does review and
recommend on our budget and, then, we have public hearings and input from our
partner agencies in August. The staff we are starting to prepare our budgets now and it
will go to the CI CIC this summer. So, I have a couple maps for you. I believe they are
in your five year work plans and I will just leave them here and you guys can pass them
around. But these are the maps that are our five year work plan. One is a community
programs map, since these are quite a change over the last couple of years. If you
remember maybe even three or four years ago we really didn't have much in the way of
community programs, now we spend about four million dollars a year on community
programs and the other are the five year work plan projects. I made these really big for
you and they have been labeled --
De Weerd: Thank you.
Anderson: I have learned from our commission. So, I'll leave them over here with
Councilman Zaremba and he can pass them out.
De Weerd: See, Todd, take note. Really big.
Anderson: I think I have worked for government long enough to know to make
everything 11 by 17. So, a couple things on the annual calendar. I gave you copies of
these. But the key points .here are what's in blue. We significantly reconfigured our
citizen's advisory group of 2010 to make sure that we were taking seriously and giving
the cities all the input and chances they could have. This really is the key group. It has
all the planning directors from the cities and the county, as well as a citizen rep and we
have received some awesome input from this group. And when I say that, they really
did help us redo our entire prioritization. I'm going to give you just some snippets of that
here in a second. They also gave us some really good input that I also passed to you,
was that before we ask of saying what are your priorities, we needed to give our partner
jurisdictions enough technical input to be able for them to answer that question. So, a
couple of things we have done is we have moved that calendar back where, actually, in
June or July this year you will be getting some information through your citizen's group
to be able to say this is where we see the technical issues. Here is where the accidents
are and also here is where we have had issues with level of service. Here is where
your congestion is. Because you're going to know that anecdotally, but if we as an
agency can give you better input we will get better output back from you. So, that was
one of the things we heard from the agency and I just gave you kind of a handout. One
of the things you will hear is will this area still congest. So, I gave you some pictures to
help you as elected officials know what we talk about by level of service and level of
service asks for level of service A or B. Well, A and B is usually good. Level of service
F is bad. We will also hear how bad is it. That's usually what level of F is it. So, what I
have given you is pictures that when you're out and around you can see what -- what
level of congestion usually means by those and so we have actually picked up some
pictures of, you know, how congested is it for each of those things. What we provide to
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 7 of 61
the CI CIC -- and we can get you some copies of the udated -- is a count -wide ma
p Y p
that tells by intersections and roadways what level of service we see across the valle
Y
and we would provide that in June before we ask you all to give us a recommendation.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, question forSabrina.
De Weerd: Yes. Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Just help me out on this. Is that level of service at its eak or --
p
Anderson: Uh-huh.
Hoaglun: -- is that how they determine that?
Anderson: Yes, Madam Mayor and Councilman. We do do level of service p.m. peak
for our level of service is how we take care of it.
Hoaglun: Okay. Thanks.
Anderson: Sure. So, I just wanted to give you an example of the type of information
that we are providing earlier in the process to be able to ask for recommendations back.
So, you just have a little more educated information, so you can be able to provide
recommendations. So, just down about the end of this slide here is to say -- then we
ask for the cities and counties and if you have transportation task forces -- which I know
Meridian does and it's a very active one -- what your recommendations are for your rate
class. And, then, we are able to do some more technical analysis and some
prioritization. One note here is we just have to remember our prioritization, both
technically and community, is about which -- it's not about which projects we do, it's
about the order in which we do them. They have already came to us as important
projects, so now it's about how do we together decide what is the order in which we do
them. So, I'm just going to touch on this, because it was a lot of numbers, so we can
answer questions if you have it. But, essentially, the citizens' advisory group helped us
determine that the way we should be looking at prioritization is a combination of
technical and community factors. With the technical it was about safety and congestion.
Those were the two things that we started to measure. Safety we looked and annual
cost of accidents and, then, we looked at how can we improve those accidents. What
were the improvements we were doing and what could we expect to be able to reduce.
We also, then, looked at congestion and we looked travel time reduction was the main
factorwe were looking at there and, then, we divided it by project cost. What we tried to
do was monetize these so we had a way to look at everything at the same level. And
community factors, which is about 30 percent of the score, and these are factors the
citizens advisory group helped us determine. We did look at a few things. We looked at
percentage inside the present city limits. They were looking at serving the existing
population. The bike network in a project was important to them. Again, agency
support, which is coming right off your project list. Importance to the system. And these
were some of the categories that they came up with. Previous investments. This was
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 8 of 61
related to us that have already been program in a project in a ro ram ear to wan
J p g y t to
be able to continue that. Specific area plans. I know you have been involved with som
e
of these with us. In request to the name in a sub area Ian, we have alread don
.. p y e
some joint plannings together. And, then, this last one I really want to mention here.
This actually ends up being about ten percent of the overall score. This is that the
community group, the CI CIC, actually can write anarrative --any member can -- once
we have done a preliminary prioritization and they can account for factors that we 'ust
. J
can't technically measure. If there are things such as economic develo ment there is a
p ,
land use issue, a comprehensive plan issue, they can write a narrative. It's actual)
Y
scored by the group. We don t score it. And they can actually factor up to ten ercent
. p
of the project score. We did have issues with projects this year that actual) did move
. Y
up and down a few points and we take their scores. I am anxious to hear next week
what the group thought about this process. My anticipation is they are actual) oin to
Yg g
want it to have more points. But it actually works very well. A lot of groups -- a lot of the
cities and the county waited until they saw the initial prioritization, so they decided if it
was worth doing a narrative on and, then, they could really put projects -- you know,
narratives behind projects they thought that had these qualities to them. So, I really did
just kind of want to give you kind of an overview of the new prioritization, because it was
different. Projects that really already had these safety and congestion factors sta ed
. .. ~ y
high in our prioritization. There were some projects that hadnt been on our radar that
did move up in the prioritization. One commitment that our commission did make was
that projects we had already been working on stayed in the hopper. We did not drop
any projects that they had been working onto move up additional projects. But as there
is room in the out years of the five year work plan, these new projects that have
prioritization scores started coming up. The last thing I really wanted to say about the
programming -- and I think the City of Meridian has been a very good partner on these
projects -- was when there is other programming considerations, such as utilities to the
project that we want to work on together, irrigation issues, that we have to deal with
construction phasing into our second phase of the Cloverdale -- Franklin-Cloverdale
project where you have a water line and we are working together on a utility agreement,
those types of things, sometimes those are going to supersede a programming score.
They may need to move up a year or wait a year, just depending on, you know, our joint
schedules. Same thing with irrigation. If we have to do irrigation in a dry season, it ma
v
make a difference when we can program something. This is what I call the common
sense factor. You know, we can run prioritize -- you know, programming all we want,
but we still need to be -- you know, have some reality when we are working with other
agencies. The last few series --this is just when the rubber meets the road. This is just
-- excuse me -- reminding the cities that we do reach out to you and want you to
continue being partners as we move into our design right of way and construction
phases. It's very important to us that the partner jurisdictions are part on project teams
and that the city councils and the county commissioners review concepts, especially
when we have large projects and we want to make sure that our concepts are
coordinated and that our public involvement is scaled. You know, many times we will
have a large public involvement meeting, sometimes we will just have neighborhood
newsletters. It really depends on what the size is. And here is his questions. I know I
went through that relatively quickly. Many of you are familiar with -- I think we have
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 9 of 61
done a good job of working with staff through the citizens' adviso commi
ry ttee process.
We appreciate their input. Caleb works on a lot of our subcommittees and r
ead a lot of
our materials, so we appreciate his items. He's made comments on our check oints
p
many times. We need cubicles back and forth.
De Weerd: Sometimes we think so, too. Councilman Zaremba did ou have
? y a
question . '
Zaremba: I must have looked like I had a question.
De Weerd: You did.
Zaremba: Actually, it's not so much a question as a comment. Thank ou for the
Y
presentation. As you re aware, I was on CI CIC before there was a prioritization
process and, then, through the development of prioritization version one. I think this
prioritization version two is a great improvement and I appreciate all the work that's
done on it and just in general appreciate the relationship that the Cit of Meridian has
Y
with ACRD, our staffs, and our management -- work very well together and I a reciate
pp
that. And your presentation tonight was very helpful.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, it was. Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Question on the technical criteria. I see the formula and I'm t in to
.. . , rY g
envision the numbers and and its an interesting number you came up with a congestion
benefit. What's the basis of the 24 dollars per hour?
Anderson: Madam Mayor and Councilman, I am so glad you asked. That number
actually came from the lieutenant governor's work on taking the 24 dollars an hour.
They looked at -- there was the task force the lieutenant governor worked on and the
Y
went through many factors. It doesn t -- it includes not only a person's time, but also
transport time in terms of some --the delay time in terms of like trucking time. So, it's all
worked in there. We have heard input back that, you know, it's low, we have heard that
it's high. Our .concern was that there was just some continuity with what was being
used at the sidewide level, so that's why we didn't go with that number. We did do
some analysis of things that other states were using and that -- and we landed on that,
because there had been so much work done at that -- at that level of the task force, that
that was probably the best that could be used by any.
Rountree: Thank you. Similar question on the safety benefit
Anderson: Sure.
Rountree: The definition is annual cost of accidents by type, times the reduction in
accidents expected from the improvement.
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 10 of 61
Anderson: Sure.
Rountree: Do you have a table or an avers a of what that annual ' ~
9 cost by accident is.
And -- and also how do you accumulate the accident data? Is tha '
t strictly by police
records or is that kept by ACRD?
Anderson: Sure. Madam Mayor and Chairman -- I'm sor -- Councilman '
ry , I can provide
you all the details. The short version is the annual cost of accidents are d
one by
classification of accidents. We did reduce our facilities, because the skew th
. y e number
so loudly, so we did a -- we did kind of a half mark between fatalities and cla
ss A
accidents. So, thats how we came to the cost of the accidents, which is ve common
that ITD ~
uses as well. The cost and the reduction of accidents in terms of ex ected b
p y
the improvement is a standard formula used nationwide that our en ineers use. So w
. g e
find out what is actual -- what improvement can be ex ected b what we are. actual)
p y Y
doing, whether we are adding through lanes, right turn lanes, widenin -- there is a
g.
formula for each that s allowed. And so it gets incredibly com licated. I didn't have all
p
of that here. And, then, we can monetize that. So, that's how we et to that -- that
. 9
portion. Did I answerthe details?
Rountree: Everything but where you get the accident data.
Anderson: Oh. I'm sorry. Yes. We get it from Web Cars throu h ITD. So the take
g y
the police reports, they process all that and, then, it comes out to us usual) sometime
. Y
in May or June and so we have to wait for that information before we can rovide that
p
back to the city.
Rountree: And they do it by corridor or by segment or by --
Anderson: By segment of roadway.
Rountree: Okay.
Anderson: So, the only time we have a little bit of a challenge is what do we attribute to
the intersection versus what we attribute to the roadway. And so our en ineers actual)
g Y
go back over the data and separate it out.
Rountree: Thank you.
De Weerd: Any other questions?
Anderson: Hopefully not that technical.
De Weerd: Well, we appreciate you being here and at least speaking En lish on this --
. g
this kind of process. It was very helpful and very informative.
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 11 of 61
Anderson: So, if you have any other questions, lease let us kno '
p wand we can send it
through Caleb or you re always welcome to come visit at a CI CIC m '
eeting. There are
working laws and impact fees and talking prioritization a ain. It's not al '
g ways English,
but it's close, so we really appreciate gettin this information and an '
9 ytime you have
questions we'd rather give you more information than have ou wonder so --
Y ,
De Weerd: Well, I can tell you that when we do have uestions staff is ve r '
q ry esponsive
and we appreciate that.
Anderson: Well, thank you for letting us come and speak with ou.
Y
De Weerd: Thank you.
Rountree: Thank you.
Bird: Thank you.
De Weerd: Did I see Bruce, the director in the back. Thank you for bein here as well
g ,
Bruce.
Item 6: Items Moved From Consent Agenda
De Weerd: Okay. There were no items moved from the Consent Agenda.
Item 7: Action Items
A. Public Hearing: Proposed SpringlSummer 2011 Fee Schedule
of the Meridian Parks & Recreation Department
De Weerd: So, Item 7 under Action Items. We start with the public hearin on Item. 7-A
. g
with the proposed spring-summer fee schedule for the Parks and Recreation
Department. Hi, Allison.
Kaptein: Good evening, Madam Mayor and Members of the Council. I have before ou
Y
on your screens a condensed version of the fee schedule. Those are highlighting just
the changes that we are making for spring and summer, although I do think that in our
. Y
packets you received the entire fee schedule. Although there is no changes, other than
these that you see in front of you. So, I can answer any questions that you may have.
De Weerd: Council, any questions regarding the fee schedule for Parks and
Recreation?
Rountree: I have none.
Bird: I have none.
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 12 of 61
De Weerd: Okay. None at this time. We will see if there is an mem '
y bers of the public
to testify on this. I would like to ask if there is any members of the ublic who '
. p would like
to provide testimony or comments on this item. Oka .Council an additional '
. Y y business
you need with Allison?
Bird: I have none.
Rountree: I have none.
De Weerd: Thank you, Allison.
Kaptein: Thank you.
De Weerd: I would entertain a motion to close the public hearing.
Bird: So move.
Rountree: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to close the public hearing to Item 7-A. All
those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
B. Resolution No. 11-780: A Resolution Adopting the
SpringlSummer 2011 Fee Schedule of the Meridian Parks &
Recreation Department; Authorizing the Meridian Parks &
Recreation Department to Collect Such Fees; and
Providing an Effective Date
De Weerd: Item 7-B is a resolution supporting the fee schedule you just heard. That
number is 11-180.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: I move that we approve the resolution in Item 7-B, 11-780.
Zaremba: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the resolution 11-780. If there is
no discussion from Council, Madam Clerk, roll call attendance.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 13 of 61
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 8: Department Reports
A. Finance Department: Strategic Plan Update Includin
g
Discussion on the Budget and Investment Policy
De Weerd: Item 8 under Department Reports, tonight we have our Finance De artment
p
thats in attendance to present their strategic plan for Finance. Thank ou for bein
Y g
here, Stacy, and your team.
Kilchenmann: Thank you. Good evening. It's April and in April you --
DeWeerd: You need to move your --
Kilchenmann: -- it's finance month. And this year for a change I brought some friends
with me to do the presentation. Or I dragged the friends with me to do the presentation.
Actually, they came willingly. And I have a great staff. I'm not -- this is a sur rise for
. p
them. I m not going to make them do this every year, but I wanted them to have a
chance to be in front of you. I tried to get them to talk about their accomplishments and
they really won't do it, but I'm happy to have them here tonight. So, the first erson
. p
thats going to talk will be Todd, our accounting manager.
De Weerd: Hi, Todd.
Lavoie: It's been awhile.
De Weerd: It has. A week.
Lavoie: Well, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, it's good to see you guys. I'm
going to talk about the -- some of the things that we have been doing in the Finance
Department. First I'm just going to do a quick overview what we are doing. The
Finance Department is built on the accounting staff and also the utility billing staff that
we have in that department. So, we do the payroll, we do accounts payable for the
entire city, we conduct all the purchasing needs that the city has. We also manage the
budget for you. And, then, we also have the utility billing system and, then, we also try
to provide you the best financial analysis and reporting that we can. I think that's
supposed to be me; is that right, Reta? All right. Here is the -- the professional
accounting staff. Reta did a great job with a little bit of paint. She did the best she
could. We got Stacy at the top as our CFO. We got Keith as the purchasing manager.
I think that's pink hair, possibly. We got Reta as the controller. We got me as the
accounting manager. We got Karie as the utility manager and wild hair. And, then, we
got Jenny Ma down at the bottom. She's our new accountant that I'm going to introduce
you guys to a little bit later. So, that is your finance staff right there. Then we also have
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 14 of 61
the nontechnical -- the other parts of the staff, which I think make
up 11 of us. So, you
have the payroll administrator, she conducts the entire a roll for '
p y the entire city by
herself. We have -- so, thats Barb Hohler. We have Jenn Lusk she's '
. our accounting
specialist for accounts payable. she does the payroll for the entire cit . We hav
y e Kathy
Wanner down at the bottom. She does the --she assists Keith Watts in o '
ur purchasing.
We have two building administrators within the utilit billin de artment. A
Y g p nd we have
four billing accounting clerks within the utility billin de artment. I think tha' '
g p is going to
be Ev. That s going to be Peter. That's going to be Cod U son and that's of
Y p g ng to be
Barbara Davidson. And the two billing administrators, that's oin to be Maria Edw r
g g ads
and Leslie. So, thats the utility staff and that's the -- I think there is 17 of us in finance
so that's the accounting and utility billing team. They look just like that too• ri ht? I'm
g
going to go over some of the completed projects that we have been workin on over the
9
past 12 months. The payroll department, as some of you heard, we have been workin
9
with the IT department, McKay Greybill, Mike Tanner specificall . We have been
Y
working on a new time card system. The time card system. The time card s stem that
,, ,~ Y
we have currently in house -- its a little outdated, its not dynamic enou h to handle the
9
different time processes that we have, so starting I think in June we are oin to be
. g g
implementing the new time card system, which we think is going to be fantastic. With
that we are going to be integrating a new human resources database called ABRA. The
HR team will be managing that for us. It's going to contain all the human resources data
benefits, wages, for all the -- all the employees within the city. And that's, actual) ,
Y
going to now automatically integrate with our finance system, which is going to be
fantastic. So, no more double input, so that's going to be a great efficiency for us. And,
then, within the accounting department we continue to look for efficiencies. We have
built a few databases over the last 12 months. One particular database we were able to
shave off 16 hours a month just the one process. Now it takes two minutes. So, it used
to take 16, not it takes two. We are continuing to look at technology to help our
systems. Within the accounts payable system we are looking to get more paperless, so
we are asking our vendors to maybe sign up to our automatic clearing house EFT
payment system, which is a paperless check and that's the ultimate goal is issue less
manual checks. To go along with the paperless thing, let me just jump back to payroll.
With the new time card system we are going to be able to implement a paperless check
stub by the end of the calendar year. So, now everybody will be able to see their check
stubs online instead of us issuing 300 check stubs every single month. So, again, just
another efficiency there. This is the first year we did paperless filings for all of our
income and taxes within the payroll and the accounts payable department. And you see
the improved efficiencies. One offhand was the credit card process. We have I think 18
credit cards without -- within the city and that's 18 credit statements, as we all have a
statement. It's pretty daunting. We will just put 18 of them in one bundle. It's a lot of
work. We have made some efficiencies we think that are going to shave off probably
eight hours a month on this process and we will continue to look at it, see if we can
make things better. The budget, as you have been presented in the past, Stacy has
been working with all the directors and the Mayor to build the CIP plan. The CIP plan is
now assisting the budget process by driving the capital enhancements. So, now the two
talk together, so now we know where we are going a little bit better, which is going to be
fantastic and you will see that this year when I present the 2012 budget to you. And,
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 15 of 61
then, we are also going to start implementin a few more erfor
9 p mance measurements
to help make sure that we are doing the right thin , makin the ri ht d ' ' '
g g g ec~sions within the
budgetary system. And, then, the general accountin we have im
g, plemented a new
grants committee. What this is -- this committee was formed with the ur ose --
p p of was
to make sure that we are accepting grants that we can handle that we ca
n manage.
Some grants are a little bit more demanding than we have the abilit to con '
y trot. There is
some purchasing requirements that we can't meet. So, the committee 'ust looks over
the re ui ~
q rements and makes sure that it's where the Council and the Ma or want us to
Y
go and make sure we can meet those requirements. And, then, we are also workin
with IT and an o g
utside vendor to provide a new shopping cart function on our Internet
that's going to be coming down the pipe here within the next ei ht months. So now
.. 9 ,
citizens can now go into our website and make payments forma be a do fee a license
Y g ,
for police or some sort. Right now we don't have that service and we believe that
service is going to be pretty helpful for the citizens. With that, it's Ion overdue we
g ,
hired her 14 months ago -- 15 months ago and we have failed to introduce ou to our
. Y
new accountant, officially. She is back here somewhere I think. Jenny Ma. Most of ou
y
have met her or seen her. But thats Jenny. She has taken on the dauntin task of
. ~ 9
being our grants financial manager. She s done awesome with it. It's a bi challen e
9 9
with all the grants that we are taking on and learning all the different rules b the federal
Y
government and changing every day. She also helps with our general ledger analysis.
She's helping us develop SOPs and operating manuals for a lot of our functions, so we
can have backups. She helped with the budget development and, then, she assists
Stacy and Reta with financial reporting and other items of such.
De Weerd: Well, Jenny, we are glad that we finally got you in here. Welcome.
Lavoie: And with that, that is my part of the presentation. I stand for any questions.
De Weerd: Council, any questions forTodd?
Bird: Not at this time.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Todd, you mentioned under the completed and ongoing projects budgeting a
performance measure development. What -- what kinds of things are you looking at
there?
Lavoie: Well, that would be working with the Mayor to work with each department to
establish some measurements that we can help with -- like hiring a new employee,
maybe we can establish, okay, there is every 20,000 citizens equals what we have
determined that's a good time to hire an employee if we can find that performance
measurement analysis. That's just one example. Or if we hire -- if we have 20,000 --
5,000 new utility accounts.. What's the threshold when we need to add that next
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 16 of 61
employee based on customer counts or citizen counts, those kind of erf
p ormances that
we will be looking at. We will be looking at other .cities and see how th '
ey do it. But
that's kind of what we are going to do in the future. None have been '
implemented at
this time to a level, but that's where we are kind of lookin at t in to im
. g ry g plement more
of that into our budgetary process.
De Weerd: Well, I think it's fair to note also over the last several ears with
. y the trend
analysis that Todd walks each of our departments throu h on a line-b -line '
g y basis
looking at performance measurements in terms of the bud et line items and looki
. g ng at
setting realistic budgets and getting out the C&P and all of those different words in
there.
Lavoie: Very much so. I will, then, hand it over to the next person, which is Reta.
De Weerd: Thank you, Todd. Welcome, Reta.
Cunningham: Good evening, Mayor and Council. We can get rid of that icture. Oka .
p Y
I m here to talk to you about the financial reporting and the latest GASB ronouncement
. p ,
which is the new fund balance designation, and GASB has decided this ear we are
. Y
going to implement these new designations and they are going to provide clarit and
. Y
consistency for readers. I actually think they are going to help. To implement we are
going to need your help. We are going to create a policy which we have in draft form
we will come back to you with that. It's going to classify the fund balances and, then,
granted authority to assign reserve. What we are hoping for. This is the -- we went
from two classifications, which is basically restricted and unrestricted and, then, we are
going to have five. The first one nonspendable, which is the noncash assets, such as --
right now we only have 4,000 for those fire trust funds and, then, we also have pre- aid
.p
expenses. The restricted hasn t changed. Its actually for external constraint in the
state -- in the impact funds. Then we have committed funds and that's goin to be
g .
internal constraints, so thats what you can set, such as like debt, the capital projects
fund. And, then, also we have assigned funds, they can either be -- you can decide if
they are going to be committed, then, you will set those numbers or you can actual)
. Y
give authority for someone else to assign the amount and this is just like at the end of
that fiscal year for the financial statements and say if you get it to Stacy, she could set
what the carry forward amount is, they are reserved for emergencies, for depreciation,
operating. And, then, the last one is going to be the unassigned. So, they just
physically went from an unreserved or unrestricted funds to now they are going to call it
unassigned funds.
De Weerd: Well, the exciting part is that first bullet underthree is dropping off.
Cunningham: That's right. So, then, this -- this first slide right here, this shows you
2010 fund balance and, then, statement of net assets. It shows you we just have
restricted fund balance and .unrestricted fund balance. We never had the ability to
actually show what reserves were. And now with the new designations this is what it's
going to look like. So, you can see we are going to have the nonspendable, restricted,
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 17 of 61
committed, assigned, which is all of our different reserves, and, then, ou're oin to
Y 9 g
come down and you're going to see on our unrestricted up there in General Fund it was
21 million, now it's going to be 7.2 million. So, it's -- I think it's a more real look at what
our unreserved fund balance is. The next thing I was just going to go over real quick is
last -- last July we actually met with the impact fund committee and went throu h the
. g
model and they decided they would like to see the census numbers come in, update the
model, and, then, meet again. So, the census numbers come in and it is 6.29 percent
less than what COMPASS projected. So, now we are waiting for COMPASS to pro'ect
. ~
the next ten years, we will update the model again, and, then, the committee will meet.
So, that's where we are at with that. And that's it. I'll take any questions.
De Weerd: Questions for Reta?
Rountree: I have none.
Bird: I have none. Very good, Reta.
De Weerd: Thank you, Reta.
Cunningham: We will be coming back to you with policy. Okay. Next I'm going to bring
up Karie Glenn.
De Weerd: Karie, I like your new hair style.
Bird: I do. I love that.
Glenn: I thought about it. I could have taken my beret out and made it really more
realistic. Madam Mayor and Council, thank you. The billing staff continues to make
improvements to meet the needs of the city, as well as providing the best customer
service that we can to meet our individual customer situations. Unfortunately, the
number of turn offs that you will -- that you will see here has actually increased six
percent in the last two years. Basically what we are hearing is due to the economy and
the job loss. We are taking into consideration, you know, different things that we can do
to ease that with payment arrangements and things like that. We are trying to improve
the information that's available online and through the billing inserts and tag lines to
reduce phone contacts, but we are not seeing that go down either. It's coming to our
attention rather quickly the people would just as soon talk to you verbally. We have
found ourselves in many situations where we are talking to somebody, answering their
questions while they are literally reading the document in their hand. They just want to
talk to somebody to get the verbal scoop, not just to read it on a piece of paper. The
rental roll overs continue to be steady. Since the implementation of the cart we are
seeing an average of about 444 exchanges every month right now, so --our completed
projects -- the bulk of those changed policies and practices are in the effort to reduce
our required shutoffs. We have extended the payment deadline. It used to be 2:00 p.m.
on Tuesday, now if you make a payment in person you have got until close of business
on Tuesday. If you make it online or over the phone I can literally take those payments
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 18 of 61
up to 6:30 in the morning. Unlimited payment arrangements. We used to allow only
once a year you could make a payment arrangement. Now as long as the customer
does comply with the payment arrangements that they make we will let them make
them over and over again. Unlimited after hours service. What that would mean is a
customer on shutoff day calls in and makes payments between 5:00 and 1:00. It's after
business hours, but we have still got somebody here, we can register the payment and
we can send somebody out -- we can dispatch water guys out to make that. At one
time it was you were limited to one occurrence and that was it. You had one shot at that
and that was it. Now, as long as they pay we will get them back on. You know, if they
pay the bill we will get them back on. We have updated the billing directives and renters
addendum forms. What we were finding is not all the information was on the form itself,
so we have attached an informational sheet to both the billing directive and the renters
addendum just so that both parties know exactly what that form means before they sign
it. The pay by phone has been in use since December of 2009. We are getting more
and more people to use it. We are, however, again, going back to the shutoff day. The
highest of the phone payment system is on Wednesday shutoffs, just as a quick way for
people to pay their past due and get their balance -- get their services restored. The
online payment system was updated in October. That update allows property managers
to manage multiple properties with one registration, whereas. before you had to have a
registration for every property. The residents and the homeowners and the renters -- it
gives them more flexibility, they can now request electronic e-statements -- electronic
statements, as well as electronic delinquent reminders, so that they will get those
notifications faster. There is also an express pay. If say somebody's parent or relative
-- you know, some other relative wanted to make a payment on your behalf, they can go
online, make a payment for you, and they don't need access to your full account. So,
the express pay will let you do that. The Meridian Cares program, updated in March of
2010, went up to 125 dollars per assistance, if you were eligible forthat assistance. It is
still governed by EI-Ada and they have -- or we have modified the eligibility year. It
used to be a year from~date of assistance granted, so if you got it in March you weren't
eligible until the next March. Now it's based on calendar year. So, January to
December. What the future holds for us, we are currently in testing mode for a near
realtime turnoff process. Right now our current practice is --the shutoff list is generated
and it's hard copied, everybody goes out -- if your name is on the list you get shut off
regardless of when you make your payment. If --once you make it on that list there is
no turning back. We are, like I said, in testing mode right now with the field personnel to
do a near realtime. So, it would be electronic. If the guys are headed to your house to
turn the water off and you make a payment before they get there, we can get your name
highlighted to where they can essentially skip you. So, it will buy some people a little bit
of time. It's alittle -- it's a chasing game. But we are going to -- we are sure going to try
to give it a shot, do what we can. Evaluating the feasibility of automated phone calls
prior to shutoff day, similar to what Idaho Power and Intermountain Gas does. What I
am finding, though, is based on the red flag rules and the Fair Trade is I'm not sure how
those other agencies are able to pull it off, because according to the rules that I'm
finding, the way our timing goes on our notices I can't get the timing down. By the rules
if you make a phone call you have to follow it up with a hard copy within five days. Well,
if you call on Monday and shut it off on Wednesday, I don't have time to get a hard copy
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 19 of 61
out there. So, I'm still working on the timing and additional costs, because automated
phone calls --for every call there would bean additional cost. Continue to evaluate and
modify the rental process to safeguard all parties. The rental process that we currently
have is the one that has been established. It is cumbersome, it is hard to explain at
times, we are constantly looking at how to improve that. What can we do to make this
better for everybody involved. So, that one is not -- is not going to go away anytime
soon. I'd like to research the feasibility and impacts of offering level program to our
citizens. That one is going to be a little more slow going, because it impacts a lot of
things. Level pay is going to move us from -- because we are letting people extend it
out. Conceivably their account balances are going to get higher and with the rental
process and keeping the bills with the property, that could, essentially, impact what a
homeowner is looking at should a renter skip. So, that one is going to be -- I want to
look at it, but it is going to take me a little bit longer to review. And, then,. update our
billing system. It is my understanding that the City of Meridian actually owns Clarity, is
the upgrade to our current billing software to sell. It's also my understanding that in the
past it had been reviewed and the testing was. deemed --didn't quite meet. our needs.
I'd like another opportunity to look at that. Since we do own the software that purchase
wouldn't be in play, but I would assume that there would be some fees associated with
any actual implementation should we move that direction. I stand before you for
questions.
De Weerd: Well -- and, Council, I would like to note Karie has been so responsive to
our customers and their suggestions and just recently -- I think just this weekend we
received an a-mail from one of our online -- or auto bill payers and he questioned why
he got an envelope in his statement and Karie responded to him first thing Monday
morning -- had already called the vendor and found out we can separate that out and
eliminate the duplicative process and wrote him back and offered -- he could even get
his statement via electronic means. So, it's -- it's just great to see the level of customer
service in that department and, Karie, I just really appreciate that care that you and your
staff show those that walk into your office very angry and you give them a lot of respect
and attend to their needs in the most customer friendly way you can. So, I would hope
that you can pass that onto your staff. We know that they are under fire a lot and
tomorrow's the day, so kudos to you and your staff.
Glenn: Well, thank you. I appreciate that and I will pass it on.
De Weerd: Okay.
Rountree: And I'll second that, Madam Mayor. It's a tough job. I appreciate what you
do. And you have done a great job in not only customer service, but making the service
more convenient I believe foryourstaffas well.
Glenn: Uh-huh. Thank you.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, quick question --
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 20 of 61
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: -- for Karie. The Meridian Cares program, you know, we tweaked it -- it's
been in place now a year with the change. Do you see anymore tweaks we need to be
making from this level to the program?
Glenn: Not at this time. I know the eligibility requirements that Meridian Cares has it is
actually different than the energy assistance program when you look at the
requirements. It is a different scale. I'm not sure how they -- how EI-Ada arrived at that,
but they are receptive to information, you know, when they are talking to us about
needing to make payment arrangements and. things like that, we will kind of throw it out
there. Most of the time we even offer -- you know, I hope you're not offended, but here
is an option, because you never know if people really want that kind of assistance, but
to date I know I had that on there. Since October 1st we have actually helped 91
families and there is still -- I want to say about eight grand left.
Hoaglun: Thanks.
De Weerd: And I think staff also spends a lot of time on keeping information to these
families on resources that are available through nonprofits, faith organizations, for
profits, just to help in that time of need.
Glenn: And I have on our website I have tried to put some various resource links that
they could go to as well.
De Weerd: Yeah. Well, thank you.
Glenn: Thank you. And the purchasing department will speak to you next.
De Weerd: The one with the pink hair.
Watts: Well, my hair actually -- my hair was a lot redder when I started. As exciting as
purchasing is, I'll try and keep this brief. I just wanted to point out a couple things we
have seen in the --one of the things that we tend to do is -- actually, we started this last
year -- is doing our How To Do Business With The City event, which went over really
well. We are currently planning another one for the first part of May of this year and
trying to make this a twice a year event. The vendors -- even the ones that come the
first time want to come back again and any information that we can give them to help
them do business with the city, they are all very excited about it and we actually have
another event that we are planning that I'll talk about in just a few minutes. One of the
things that we have done is we have worked extensively with the Public Works and the
Parks Department, which are our two main customers, to come up with standard
operating procedures. These processes are -- are ongoing -- to be an ongoing, always
changing,- always improving event. It's not something that ever gets put in stone,
because we can always improve our processes and we will continue to meet with both
Public Works and Parks, as well as all the other departments to see if there is any
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 21 of 61
needs that they have that we can improve on. One of the things we did is we -- Kathy
and I go to each of our departments and meet with them on a -- at least a biannual
basis to see if there is anything that they know of that we are not doing to meet their
needs and they are -- they have been very -- very positive and very complimentary
meetings. We understand each other's needs better when we do this and we improve
our processes as the bottom line that comes out of that. One of the things that I'm
pretty proud of as I have -- I was certified this year from the NIGP, which is the National
Institute for Government Purchasing, that's something that I have wanted to do for many
many years and finally accomplished that this year and it was quite an ordeal, but I'm
glad to have that behind me and finally accomplish that. One of the things that I think
I'm most excited about is we have -- we have kind of had our processes in place now --
it's been five years that we have been doing things as they are and I want to go through
and completely revamp my bid documents that I've been making notes over the past
years of ways to improve things -- issues that come up during different procurements,
we have learned a lot since we have started doing the things that we are doing and we
have a lot of information that we can implement to actually improve it, streamline it, and
actually simplify it so it's easier for the vendors, easier for us, the departments, all the
way around and probably looking at a six month period to have that completed as well
and --which goes along with that as well is -- I'm way ahead. Where am I at? Well, one
of the things that I want to do also is revamp our contracts and I have met with Ted and
talked with Ted several times from our legal department on ways of improving our
contracts and I have actually scheduled to meet with Ted and we have been postponing
this for several months that we can take a lessons learned approach with the issues that
we have had in the past and we will plan on starting that probably in the next couple of
weeks going through this and revamping our contracts, tighten them up and making
them a little more bulletproof. One of the things we have done is we implemented a bid
solicitation service, which vendors are extremely happy about. They -- they can go in
just like you do for anything else and subscribe to it from the main web page of the city's
website and when we posted bids online they automatically get a notification. The only
issue we have with that is they get all our notifications, so if you're a road contractor
you're going to get office supplies or whatever else we may have in solicitation and the
vendors don't seem to mind that at all, they like getting the notifications, which is
another thing that we offer to the -- to the public. One thing that we are proud of that we
have had no successful bid protests in the last five years. Not that we haven't been
challenged and the clerk's office can attest that we get multiple public records request
every week and it's almost afull-time. job I think for Jaycee now as dealing with the
public records request, but we have had no public -- or no successful bid protests,
which actually shows that our processes are fair and they are transparent. The future
thing that we want to do in the future -- I'm a part of a larger team, which is a citywide
team and we are trying to find some project management software that we can use
citywide, multiple departments. We have looked at quite a few of them and are still
looking at several of them. I am actually going to try to implement one. I started this
week working with one and I'm going to at least implement it in the purchasing
department just to see what our needs would be and what would actually work for us
and anything that can help that group, but we are in need of that quite -- quite a bit.
Okay. I talked about my forms. I got ahead of myself. I'm on the Idaho Public
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 22 of 61
Purchasing Association board as well and one of the -- like our Doing Business With
The City, we are planning on having a much broader, larger scale event, which is a
reverse vendor trade show and we have ITD on board, DEQ, city of Boise and I think at
least one of the military branches that is interested in coming here for a reverse vendor
trade show and we are hoping to have it the first week of March in 2012. March is
purchasing month and so we have the room available, the space available here on that
day and we have been trying to plan this. We tried to get something set up this year. It
was quite an --quite an ordeal and the state actually backed off it at the last minute, so
we did not go through with it this year, but so far we have a recommendation for next
year and we are hoping to have that here. Well, back to Stacy.
De Weerd: Any questions for Keith?
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Just what is a reverse vendor --
Rountree: It's essentially -- you have probably been to a vendor trade fair before. The
reverse trade fair is, basically, when you have the purchasing organizations set up their
own tables and booths and the vendors come around and offer their services to
everyone. They get the -- so, a contractor or a business can actually come in and meet
with maybe a dozen different public agencies and everybody does have their own little
way and so they can explain it, get to know each other, introduce face to face, rather
than trying to make an appointment with a specific buyer or something from an
organization, now they can come and meet with multiple organizations in one location in
one day. So, it saves them time, money, and it's typically apretty -- pretty welcomed
event by the public.
Rountree: Thank you.
De Weerd: Great. Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: When you were listing who you expected to I didn't hear you say ACRD.
They might be --they might like to be involved.
Watts: We will invite everybody. Whether or not they all decide to attend, that is -- we
will try and hit up every organization in the valley, basically. Every public organization.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Zaremba: Cool.
De Weerd: Well, congratulations on your certification.
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 23 of 61
Watts: Thanks, Mayor.
De Weerd: Anything else, Council? Thank you, Keith.
Watts: Thank you.
Kilchenmann: Okay. To wrap up, you know, the evening wouldn't be complete without
some graphs. So, what I want to do briefly -- and a lot of this is information that you are
free to take and kind of absorb as we go into this year's budget process. So, I have --
the major thing that I do is financial analysis and planning. So, I'm just going to take a
look back and, then, a look forward as we enter into the. budget process. So, if we go
back and look over the last -- going back from 2003 to 2011 and one correlation that is
very well established that is used as a measurement is the correlation between
population and government growth and so as you can see we had a tremendous
population growth, we also had a growth in our FTEs in the city. This is a look at our
personnel budget. This is done before transfers, so you can kind of see the cost of
each department or each major function before we do transfers to the Enterprise Fund
and so forth. You can look at -- the black is where it was in 2003 and you can compare
it to where we are -- we were in 2010. This is our final budget. This is the same graph,
only done with operating -- with operating costs. So, it's the same comparison period
from 2003 to 2010, again, final budget. Another way to look at it is the percent changes.
We have had in our final budgets, again, before transfers. So, if you look at personnel
you can see admin -- I did the average increase for eight years, so that's the annual
average increase. And, then, I did just the change from 2010 to 2011. So, again, I did
that for each function.. And these -- these changes, these percent changes are -- are
going to be -- well, you can -- it will be apparent why they are important when we go to
the next stage where we look ahead. So, then, we look at the budgets and we look at
our fund balances. So, the top one -- I just compared the Enterprise unrestricted fund
balance -- or the total fund balance to the total General Fund balance and, then, the
bottom one is a General Fund balance and you can just see how the General Fund --
how, actually, we have done -- consistently been able to build our balance, except for
that little blip is when we built the City Hall. And it's kind of interesting that the
Enterprise Fund and the General Fund are almost meeting now, because for years the
Enterprise Fund was -- was our big cash fund balance, but as the infrastructure has
gone in those balances are almost meeting. So, this is just a look at the -- we have
looked at the unrestricted fund balances. These are all the reserves and restricted fund
balances we have had over the years. When Reta talked she went through that policy,
that fund balance policy, and this is just kind of an interesting look at the way the
balances have gone up and down, the different ones we have had. We have had the
reserve for the police when we had the Locust Grove overpass. Our capital
improvement fund, exchanged, et cetera. So, now the important thing is we are looking
forward. So, if we -- I'm trying to look ahead for five years. We talked a lot about the
Enterprise Fund when we did the fee balance, so I just did the General Fund. So, this is
looking at -- what our fund balances look at five years in the future and where -- where
those growth numbers I showed you are important is the assumptions that this particular
model is based on. One is the annual growth in property taxes, five percent, which is
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 24 of 61
small compared to our historical balances. Two, the annual expense growth in 2012
and 2013 is only three percent and if you look back at those averages we -- as
population and our service demands grow -- and we haven't come close to being only
three percent. And, then, in 14 and 15 I jumped the growth to five percent and I'm using
the capital improvement plan that we -- we adopted this winter. So, it just kind of gives
you a look at if -- if we do our capital improvement plan and we stay at this moderate
growth level what will our fund balance look like. And that's just what it looks like. So,
obviously, the operating reserve is slightly increasing as we slightly grow and that fund
balance is slightly -- it's shrinking as we start developing the capital improvement plan.
So, that's good, that's doable, but the key to that particular model I used is only five
percent growth in property tax, but very moderate growth on our expense side. So,
here is -- here is kind of the assumption that we are making as we go into the 2012
budget. We know -- we have a pretty good idea that our taxable value has dropped
another ten percent, so that has big ramifications as far as what the levy rate will be.
We know -- we have an estimate that are new construction taxable value that will be
applicable to the income we will get in 2012 has dropped 30 percent -- 30 percent of
over last year. One good thing is I -- I don't know if you remember last year there was
new legislation that allowed property owners to go retroactively back and change tax
classifications as development was halted. It looks like that's stabilized. For example,
new construction last year we lost 19 million and it's looking like only about 600,000 this
year. It looks like annexation value is going to be insignificant this year. We are
thinking General Fund revenue sources. We haven't -- I haven't done the complete
revenue manual, but sources other than property tax will probably be about at the ten
and 11 levels that we have seen. Levels of residential construction, we will budget to be
about the same as they are this year and as they were last year. Commercial
construction we think will be better, but we don't want to be very optimistic with that
forecast, because it's hard to predict dollars, because projects vary, time periods vary,
so we will probably be pretty conservative with that forecast. And population increases,
we don't expect a lot of population increase. If you we look at the Idaho economic
forecast they used they are saying the economy is still weak, still a housing crisis, they
don't expect a lot of in migration. And just some stats. The highest annual population
increase in Idaho was 2.6 in 2007 and two-thirds of that was from migration. In 2010
population increased only 1.3 percent and only a quarter of this increase was from
migration. Okay. We are not moving. Tom, are you over there screwing me up?
Barry: Well, not lately.
Kilchenmann: Okay. So, finally, the last thing we are going to talk about is taxable
value and levy rate. So, we already know that taxable value is going to go down again.
Just mathematically, when taxable value goes down, if nothing else changes, the levy
rate automatically goes up. So, this is an historical look at that relationship. I don't
know why this -- so, another way to look at it is just by kind of looking at, well, if we kept
the property tax the same, base tax, didn't change it and taxable value changed, how
does that change the levy rate. So, you can see how wildly that can vary the levy rate.
So, if we looked this year, we are at .004. If we decrease that ten percent we go .0045.
If we increase it -- if we increase the taxable value, levy rate drops, so forth. So, those
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 25 of 61
percentage rates might seem out of the ordinary or widely varying, but if we look
historically the highest percentage increase in Meridian's taxable value was actually 34
percent between 2005 and 2006. I mean that is -- that's huge. The biggest decrease
so far was 12 percent from 2008 to 2009. In two years from 2008 to 2010 taxable value
dropped 23 percent. So, what does our property tax calculation look like this year?
Now, you have to keep in mind this is an estimate, because I don't have the taxable
value for Ada county, I just know it's predicted to drop about ten percent, but I haven't
factored new construction in here, so all I did was take last year's taxable value and
subtract ten percent. So, this, again, is an estimate and as we get updated numbers I'll
send those out to you. So, this would be our normal calculation with the -- adding the
three percent and adding the new construction annexation we can expect this year. So,
you can see that moves our property tax from 18 -- to 18.9, except this year it's at 19.8
percent, with our levy rate going to .0047. So, here is -- here is some scenarios. So,
what happens if -- and we have several choices. One, we can just take the standard
property tax like I just showed you, which means our revenue increases five percent.
Number two, we can forego taking the three percent, which means our revenue
increases from new construction and it increases two percent. Number three, we can
try to get the levy rate to stay as it is this year, which means our revenue increases ten
percent. And, then, four, we can add our foregone amount back and do a standard tax
calculation, which increases our levy rate eight percent. So -- then we took those four
scenarios and we looked at some things. We -- what we estimate the base will be,
which Todd will have completed probably next week, so we are just going to use -- we
will kind of look at an estimate. But, then, we know some of the -- we know we have to
replace -- or generally replace -- replace vehicles, parks replacements -- if we move the
police step raise, if we do a three percent merit, if we do a computer replacement, et
cetera, et cetera, those just give you kind of a look at what our discretionary revenue
might turn out to be under any of those scenarios. Always keeping in mind that in a
couple years the COPS grant funding will stop, so we need to pick that number up. So
-- so, just some things to think about, some considerations as we go into this budget
season. We do need to look at what we are going to do about the three percent
allowable property tax in the future, because unless we are willing to make the
commitment that we are only going to grow our budget by three percent -- or, actually,
less than three percent, because we would be living on new construction increases, we
need to have kind of a plan of how we are going to -- how we are going to approach
that. Do we want to develop a trigger for when we take the three percent, so, obviously,
you can see we can handle this year without taking atwo --the three percent. We have
kept our base low enough that we will have money for some discretionary revenue and
we have some new construction. Personally, I don't think it's likely that we would ever
go back and reclaim our foregone amounts, just because when you do that it just shoots
the levy rate up. So, those are just some things to think about in the next few months
as we firm figures and we get ready to go into the next budget process. Todd, could
you advance it manually forme? So, in conclusion, I want to thank the Mayor for driving
our collaborative budget process. You have already been hard at work this year
meeting with us and all the departments. I want to thank the Council for being educated
participants in all stages of the budget development. We have already had Council in
our sessions kind of getting out the line items and, then, I want to thank the department
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 26 of 61
directors who have the attitude that they are working on a city budget, not just their
department budget. So, finally the end. Are there any questions at end of that? Still
have to do the policy.
De weerd: Council, any questions?
Rountree: No. Good info.
De weerd: Thank you.
Kilchenmann: Okay. The very last thing -- I know you're weary, so we will do this
quickly. we have two policies that I would like to pass. One of them is an investment
policy and this is the investment policy we already have, but I would like to use it to
replace the kind of banking I guess it is -- ordinance that we have, which refers to a
bank that no longer exists and some outdated terms that I don'tthink they are applicable
anymore. So, I gave you the investment policy. I did make two changes in it, since I
first sent it out to you, and that I changed that the city will try to minimize custodial credit
risk, which is the risk of an institution failing, to the highest reasonable degree. I had
previously put we will insure everything, but, then, I realize for our checking account we
are dependent on the government program that insures those and should that
government program go away, you know, that's something we can do. So, that's the
only change I made in the investment policy. So, I wasn't going to go through the whole
agonizing detail of it tonight, unless anybody has any questions on it.
De weerd:. Council, any questions?
Rountree: Madam Mayor, I have no questions and I think the direction you're
requesting is the right way to go.
Kilchenmann: Thank you.
Rountree: I thought it was a good policy that needs to be brought forward and put in our
ordinance.
Kilchenmann: Okay. The second policy I had is the budget policy and we -- we do
have a budget policy, it's fairly brief, it was written in 1998. And one note. Bill is going
to help me turn this into a resolution ordinances, they -- you know, into the right format,
but basically for the budget policy I took all the things that we do in the practice we have
followed and I just memorialized them and wrote them down, so that we would have a
policy for those who follow us, for the public, et cetera. So, are there any questions on
the budget policy? And I added the CIP plan to it.
De weerd: Council?
Rountree: No questions.
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 27 of 61
De Weerd: Okay.
Hoa lun: No, Madam Mayor. I'd just comment, Stacy, again, as Councilman Rountree
g .
said on the other one, I'm glad to see this and it looks very thorough and it certainly
doesn't leave things up to someone's imagination or -- we have got it there now, so
that's a good thing.
De Weerd: Okay.
Kilchenmann: I have a question. So, then, we take these and make -- you make these
into resolutions; right?
Na Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, we will work with Finance to create
ry ..
resolutions to, then, bring this back in front of you -- I would anticipate probably the
26th rather than the 19th, just because it's the caseload we have. We will bring it back
with a resolution.
Kilchenmann: All right. Thank you.
B. Continued from April 5, 2011- Planning Department: Cost
Share and License Agreements with Ada County Highway
District (ACRD) for the Landscaping and Maintenance
Associated with the Ustick, Duane to Campton and the
Franklin, Ten Mile to Linder Roadway Projects
De Weerd: Thank you. And thank you to Finance staff and utility billing. Appreciate
ou bein here. Okay. Item 8-B is continued from April 5th. This is -- turn over to Mr.
Y g
Nary?
Na :Yes. Thank ou, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. You continued this
ry Y
item from last Tuesday's agenda. These are the cost share agreements of the Ada
Count Hi hwa District for both landscaping and maintenance with the Ustick, Duane
Y g Y
to Cam ton Drive, and Franklin, Ten Mile to Linder, roadway projects. We continued
p
them for a week, because we had made a request to the ACRD commission to
reconsider their decision. They did grant that reconsideration last Wednesday, the 6th,
and set the matter over to their commission meeting tomorrow at noon. I did provide
their counsel with alternative language that we had been discussing between our
a encies and so that is on their agenda for tomorrow at noon for a review by the
9 .. I
commission. So, I'm going to ask if you would set this matter over for one additiona
week. I'm ho eful if the commission will approve the alternative language next Tuesday
p
we will be able to brin back to you finalized agreements for approval and, then, get this
g
project moving forward.
De Weerd: Thank you, Mr. Nary. Any questions from Council?
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 28 of 61
Rountree: Madam Mayor, do you need a motion or do we just need to agree to move
this to --
De Weerd: Just agree.
Na : A motion to continue would probably be appropriate, Council Member Rountree.
ry
Rountree: Oka . Madam Mayor, I move that we continue Item 8-B until our last
Y
meeting of the month.
Hoaglun: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second. We will --until the 26th or to the 19th?
Rountree: To the 19th I guess. Yeah.
De Weerd: Okay. And second agrees?
Hoaglun: Yes.
De Weerd: Oka .This has been moved to continue to April 19th. All those in favor say
Y
aye. All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Hoa lun: Question, Madam Mayor. Will we continue that to the 26th or the 19th?
9
Rountree: 19th.
De Weerd: Did I say the 26th? I said the 19th.
Hoa lun: Yes, you said 19th. I just wanted to be sure we weren't --
g
De Weerd: Yeah. Just one week.
Rountree: Just one week.
Hoaglun: Okay. Yes, I'm an aye.
C. Public Works: Surety Presentation
De Weerd: Oka . All a es. Item 8-C is our Public Works. I will turn this over to Mr.
Y Y
Barry.
Bar :Thank ou, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. Good evening. Last week
rY Y .
late I ut a co of this roposal in your mailboxes and I also e-mailed it to you as well
p pY p
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 29 of 61
in the event ou didn't frequent your mailbox. In any event, I'm here to provide
Y
relimina recommendations and get your thoughts on those recommendations as it
p rY
relates to our work centered around the warranty and performance surety issues in
Public Works. We have quite a bit of information to share tonight, so I will try to get
throu hit efficiently here. I do at the start of our presentation want to recognize several
g
of the staff who have been on the committee, Mr. Nary, several of my staff -- I won t go
throu h eve body. I will have the list here for you in just a moment. And, then, also
9 rY
certain) Ste hanie Barnes from All American Insurance, who has been -- her and her
Y p
collea ues, who I will also introduce later in the presentation, have been instrumental in
g
hel in us as sub'ect matter experts onthis -- on this complicated matter. So, certainly
pg J
we do not have developers in the room, but there were several developers and
com anies that were also part of a focus group that we held several meetings with, who
p
also rovided input with regard to this proposal. So, without further adieu we will go
p .
ahead and et started. The agenda for this evening is give a brief situational analysis,
g ..
what are we dealing with here, whats the issues, some additional background
information framing those issues. There will be a brief bonding presentation that Ms.
Barnes will provide for the Council, since part of our recommendation involves a
bondin com onent we thought it would be useful to have her provide information about
g p
bonds as a t e of surety, since the city has not general use of, and, then, a formal
Yp
recommendation, along with next steps should that recommendation be considered.
So a little bit of background getting us to where we are in this -- with regard to this
articular redicament is that historically the Public Works Department had not
p p
conducted warrant inspections up until about 18 months ago. There is a number of
Y .
different reasons for that. Regardless, one of the things we noticed in trying to improve
overall erformance in our department and track a variety of different types of matrix
p
and information is that we had noticed that fairly new infrastructure had been subJect to
uite a bit of maintenance and operational costs that we felt were out of the ordinary for
q
new infrastructure. We looked into that and realized low and behold, even though
nd develo ers are su osed to supply us a one year warranty, under
contractors a p pp
ordinance and in theory have been, the Public Works Department staff had not gone
back and ins ected infrastructure during that one year warranty period to make sure it
p
was still functioning. So, as I mentioned the process improvement to conduct warranty
ins ections was made. We now conduct -- or have been conducting warranty
p
ins ections for about 18 months and we have performed this inspection at around the
p ,,
tenth month, ma be the 11th month, of simply -- it s a compressed schedule, you will
y
see art of our recommendation deals with that compressed schedule. It s not a whole
p ,
lot of time to put a contractor or developer on notice to try to improve a fix, but it doesn t
ive us a lot of time either to get the systems up and tested either. You may recall last
g
ear sort of mid spring or so, into the summertime, we had -- actually, six months into
Y .
our warranty inspection a change and we had our first project come to our attention,
which was a 278 lot residential subdivision that had several failures that were detected
Burin the warranty inspection. This project was a quality project done by quality
g .
en ineering and developers, as well as a quality contractor. The project was
g
com leted. U on completion the city accepted the project and, then, the warranty had
p p
commenced on that project. We conducted a warranty inspection around the 11th
month eriod, there were several deficiencies, we notified the contractor, which is
p
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 30 of 61
rocedure for us. The contractor, essentially, because of the economic times, was
p
distressed and unable to or erhaps unwilling, depending upon how you want to look at
p ..
it but essential) ,defaulted on their commitment to improve the deficiencies, so the city
v ..
ended u being responsible in the long run for correcting these deficiencies, since we
p ~ ' ~ ma
owned the infrastructure and the initial cost estimate was about 325,000. You y
recall when we first started down this road. I'm happy to report that so far it looks like
we will be able to kee the cost around 100,000 dollars. It hasn't been closed out just
p ,
et but most of the work has been completed. We have another problem project thats
y ~ ~ ~ ion and found
headed our way. This is a project where we have done a warranty inspect
almost the same case -- this is a 73 lot residential subdivision. The project was
com leted and acce ted by the city, the warranty commenced, a warranty inspection
p p .. ..
occurred about the tenth or 11th month. There were deficiencies identified, the
ontractor defaulted because they actually went bankrupt and so the city got stuck
c ,
ain with the ro'ect and it looks like preliminary cost estimates are going to be around
ag p 1
the 100 000 dollar mark on that particular case, too. So, as you know I briefed you last
ear on the -- at least the first one and the Council directed us to -- the Public Works
Y
De artment to look at sort of our surety program and try to minimize the risk and make
p
recommendation on how to best minimize that risk and so we have done just that. So,
a
here is sort of the situation we find ourselves in, just to frame where we are. The
develo er builds -- we are talking about the private construction world here, so a private
p
veto er has a contractor that they typically hire to build .improvements, water and
de p
rim rovements is what we are limiting the scope of this work to, and at the end of
sewe p
that construction period the contractor is, then, required to give the .city a one year
warrant but there is no contractual relationship there between the contractor and the
Y~
cit . The contract relationship really only exists between the contractor and the
Y .
develo er rovided that they entered a contract. So, there is really no nexus between
p ' p ~ er's
the cit and the contractor, except through ordinance, which requires the develop
Y
contractor to ive us a warranty. So, really, we have no teeth. So, there is no current
g .
ostin or re uired ostin of a surety or bond -- either in bond format or cash or letter
p 9 q p g
dit or an hin that's re uired to cover this warranty period. So, we are kind of
of cre yt g q
han in out there financial) , as well as potentially legally and, really, the only way that
99 y .
e have ex erienced tot to recoup our costs associated with making the
w p rY
im rovements ourselves to the deficiencies founder and the warranty inspection is to
p
enerall o after some sort of legal mechanism, which we have found has not been
g y g ' nificant
successful to date. Those costs certainly are unpredictable, complicated, sig ,
'ect to escalation. This creates a couple of impacts that we have experienced
subj , ,
firsthand. First of all, it complicates the building permitting and certificate of occupancy
rocess when ou have the developer, whose contractor has defaulted on their ability to
p Y .
im rove the deficiencies or rectify the deficiencies, and, of course, the city is put in a
p
h s of because we are not supposed to be issuing certificates of occupancy for
toug p . ,
sewer or water s stems that either do not function or are below specifications, so we
Y .. .
would -- as we had tried -- attempted to prevent the issuance of additional building
ermits and certificates of occupancy, found ourselves in a tough spot when the
p
develo er claims that we are interfering with their ability to develop and their purchase
p
a reement -- urchase and sale agreements and certainly occupancy of their new
g p ,
homeowners are t in to move in, yet we find ourselves saying, well, we can t have
rY 9
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 31 of 61
eo le move into these types of situations where there is not a functioning sewer
p p ,
stem or water s stem. So, it's created an enormous challenge for us. Its possible
sy Y . .
this challen a has existed for many many years for the City of Meridian, but the fact that
g
we have not ins ected during the warranty period, we do not know how many of these
p ...
ro'ects in the ast have just become the responsibility of the city. So, in any event, as
pJ p .
art of our work we have focused predominately on the warranty surety issues, but we
p
oked also as art of our scope, at performance, because we currently do require
to p
erfiormance sureties to be issued to the city in the event that a developer does not
p
want to build the im rovements. So, in orderforthem to get the final plat signature they
p
uld have to ost a surety -- a performance surety guaranteeing that the
wo p
' rovements would be constructed. So, as part of our work we looked at whether the
imp
of sureties and the amounts of those sureties were applicable or made sense still
types
nd we have a cou le of small recommendations to shore up that area, although our
a p
current focus is redominately on warranty sureties. So, to begin, the performance
p ..
ret -- existin suret amount is 110 -- this is from the Unified Development Code.
su y g Y ..
The Unified Develo ment Code does allow for a higher amount, but thats the minimum
p
recommendations from the UDC, which we have adopted. Current surety amount, as
we have determined throu h not only benchmarking and looking at other cities, but also
g
costin out ro'ects off real world examples, we believe is not adequate and, then, to
g pJ
brin in ali nment our overall recommendation with regard to warranty sureties, we are
g g ~ f
oin to make a recommendation later that bond be considered as a type o
g g ' ' t this
erformance surety. They currently are not accepted by the City of Meridian a
p
oint in time. So with re and to all that background, we assembled a surety team, if
p g
ou will, or work group, which comprised -- it was actually a pretty big work group,
Y
com rised of a number of different staff members throughout the Public Works
p the
De artment in addition to Legal, Finance, Purchasing, Planning and other areas of
p ' Id as
cit in addition to subject matter experts in the insurance, legal, and bonding fie
Y~
well. So, this team worked for a series of months .and about weekly we would have two
hour meetin s t in to et our arms around sort of how we get to where we are and
g ry 9 g
ou will see the recommendations are fairly straight forward and simple and don't
Y ..
necessaril reflect the six month project, but we were very diligent in our work in
Y
researchin all of the different avenues and potential pitfalls associated with the
g
recommendations that we have got for you. Our guiding principles were fairly straight
forward. We wanted to use a simplified and streamlined approach, that would be open
and trans arent in developing our processes, our methods, and our overall
p
recommendation. We also wanted to make sure we were fair and balanced in our
overall a roach and our outcome and that we engaged the stakeholders who were
pp
most im acted by any type of changes that we were going to make a recommendation
p
on with re and to this issue. We wanted to insure that developers were offered all the
g ..
same o tions and no one was given favoritism, certainly as a public agency. We
p ,, .
wanted to address city exposure and also minimize developer requirements and
burdens if we could along the way. We also thought it would be great to provide greater
flexibilit if ossible, as well as options to the developing community and seek solutions
Y p
that would fit any economy, not just the economy that we are in today. Finally, we
benchmarked a number of different jurisdictions in the pacific northwest to see what
the were doing, that we could strengthen our overall proposal and ground truth it, so to
Y
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 32 of 61
s eak, with regard to what was going on for -- across the board. We finally wanted to
p ..
ali n our outcomes with our city mission, vision, and values. So, we undertook a
9 ..
number of different actions as a group. First of all, we reviewed statutes and policies to
determine what kind of options were on the table for us. We wanted certain work within
law and with standard practices. We evaluated a series of different development
ro'ects, both past and current to address our level of exposure and we surveyed those
p J .. .
ractices of other regional cities, as well as highway districts, formed this cross-
p ..
functional team I just mentioned and we evaluated both current and future conditions.
We wanted to define the surety process for construction and nonconstruction scenarios
and we also put a flow chart together to describe that. We held communication
sessions with Council members you may recall back in December on this issue. We
also en aged the subject matter experts, as well as developing members from our
g .
developing community. The subject matter experts I referenced earlier are up here on
the screen, includes Stephanie Barnes, who is going to speak to you in just a few
minutes. The focus group participant list is this list on the screen here, represents a
number of different types of developer -- developers and developing companies,
includin W..H. Moore, Van Auker Companies, Coleman Homes, Brighton, Prime Land
g
Develo ment, Capital Development, West Park Company, and so on and so forth. So,
p ..
we did reach out and hold three meetings total with as many of these participants as we
could get to the table. The benchmarking survey is actually noteworthy for us, because
it real) did help us ground truth sort of what we thought against what was sort of
. y ..
Indust standard, if you will, with regard to the entities that we looked at. We looked at
ry
14 Idaho locations, 13 Oregon locations, five Washington locations and three Utah
locations. Most of them were cities -- 19 were cities, five were highway districts, one
was a sewer district. Twenty-one of these 25 require a warranty, surety, or bond
ran in an here from ten percent to 50 percent of the total cost of construction. The
g g Yw
re Tonal average for the warranty, surety, or bond was 34 percent. Ten of the 25
g
re uire performance surety bonds in excess of 110 percent, although most did require
q
110 ercent, which is the recommendation -- or at least within the UDC. And those
p .
amounts ranged from 120 upwards to 150 percent. The regional average, however,
was about 12l percent for performance sureties, with the average regional warranty
eriod bein about 1.2 years, meaning that there are a number of jurisdictions that do
p 9 .
re uire a two year warranty and so when you average it across the 25 we ended up
q
ettin about a 15 month warranty period on average. In any event, I want to turn this
9 g
over, because we are going to make a recommendation for the city to consider bonds
and we found it helpful as a surety group to get educated on bonds, some of us were
not ve familiar with bonds, have used or worked around bonds, and so we consulted
rY
heavil with our friends in the insurance and bonding companies and so, Stephanie, if
Y
ou wouldn't mind taking it over. As shes coming up I will say that this has been a --
Y
sort of an enlightening process for us to go through and I think you will find the same to
be true as Stephanie updates you on this.
Barnes: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, this has actually been quite an
interesting experience for us as well, going through all this with them. They have been
ve extensive in their research and so it's been a lot of fun, actually. I don't have any of
rY . ,
the fun graphics that the county had to make it interesting. Insurance is boring, so --
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 33 of 61
just a little disclaimer here for legal purposes, that I didn't write this myself, I took a lot of
the information from an insurance related publication. I'm going to talk a little bit about
the types of guarantees. Some of these you're already using, some of them you
probably are really familiar with, but I'm just going to briefly address a few of them. Of
course there is corporate surety bonds, irrevocable letters of credit, certificates of
deposit or CDs, cash, certified checks, cashier's checks, money orders, and
agreements. Okay. Irrevocable letters of credit. Developer encumbers and portion of
its line of credit, a fee is charged for the instrument. If the bank decides not to renew a
irrevocable letter of credit or the city believes that the developer -- the city would have
the right to draw down on the letter. The city, of course, is, then, responsible for taking
over the improvements and finishing out the project. These are some of the pros and
cons that you're going to deal with in the different types of security available. Jumping
way ahead. Okay. And, of course, with their letters of credit I forgot to mention also
that once you have drawn down on that the developer is usually responsible for paying
back the bank immediately, so those are kind of the cons for the developer. CDs, cash
deposit, that ties up the developer's capital. It requires some administrative duties of
the city. 0f course, the city must confirm that the CD is in a proper assignable form,
that you have the authority to draw down on the CD if required. And that you maintain
the CD in a safe location. Again, you would be -- have the right to drawn down on the
instrument, you would be responsible for completing the improvements yourself. Other
security, such as cash, same concerns as CDs. You would also need to be sure that
the cash being deposited isn't subject to possible bankruptcy preference rules and end
up having to pay it back. Agreements. These are not used very often. This would put
the city itself in control of funds. You would be responsible for disbursing payments
monitoring, maintaining records, can create liability for the cities if not handled properly.
Wouldn't suggest that you do that. The developers, of course, are concerned that funds
might be delayed if you feel that anything is being done improperly. The advantage of
the corporate surety bonds. Surety bonds or what you like to call performance bonds
differ from the other type of security that I have mentioned. Some of the major
differences are that bonds provide prequalification of the developer through an
underwriting process that the company does. Not only is the surety company
concerned with their financial standing, but the qualifications are examined through a
rigorous assessment of the business structure, integrity, and achievements. They
require multiple years of financials, as well as in-depth applications, resumes of the
owners and they really make sure that the developer can do what it is they make an
agreement on. The surety bond doesn't tie up the developer's source of funding or the
liquid assets. The other thing is the surety company is accustomed to dealing with
these types of defaults and they work with the city and the developer to remedy the
situation and if that's not a possibility they go ahead and take over the performance of
the agreement. And, of course, it's in the surety's best interest to handle the claim
quickly and avoid additional costs, as well as affecting their rating with the treasury
listing. The other thing about bonds is the full amount of the bond is available to
complete the work irrespective of the amount that's spent to date or work done by the
developer. So, if you have a hundred thousand dollar bond, you're 50 percent done
with the job, you still have 100,000 dollars on that bond limit to finish out what needs to
be done. Bonds are well suited for the allegations associated with the improvements of
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 34 of 61
subdivisions. Subdivision bonds are a t e of suret that i
Yp y ncludes the performance
payment of warranty all in one piece within the bonds. The
guarantee -- the
performance of the agreement, which if written correct rovid
p es for the completion of
the improvements, guarantee that all contractors and su li '
pp ers are paid and that the
warranty provisions of the agreement are followed throu h. Develo er '
g p s may also obtain
a separate warranty bond if they provided a different t e of sec '
erfor ~ ~ Yp urity for the
p mance portion up until the fob is accepted. So, as ou can see I believ
bonds c Y e surety
an be a beneficial alternative to other forms of securit that '
acce tin . Y you re currently
p g And that's my presentation. So, if you have an uestions I w
Y q ould be happy
to answer them.
De Weerd: Thank you. Mr. Bird?
Bird: Stephanie, I'm definitely in favor of bonds and stuff but in the c
ase bankruptcy on
a surety bond, it is different than a performance bond. Does a bankru tc elimi
p y Hate the
bond or the bond bought upfront by the develo er orthe contractor?
p
Barnes: That's -- they are looking -- and they will address that here in a li '
the bit, but
they are looking at both options, taking a performance bond u front whi
. p ch would
contain the performance payment and warranty piece or takin securities CDs cash
9 ,
for the performance portion, once the job's accepted, then takin a warrant
g y bond for
the remaining warranty, so --
Bird: But warranty bonds would be subject to being lost in a bankru tc wouldn't it?
p Y~
Barnes: No. Once the bond is written the insurance com an --
p Y
Bird: It has to be paid. They are obligated --
Barnes: Yes.
Bird: -- even asurety-- I knowthey are in performance, but in suret the are too.
Y Y
Barnes: That's correct.
Bird: Thank you.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: I had a question for Stephanie. Kind of similar lines. I 'ust wanted to be sure
1
-- in the proposal for performance bonds, increase the amount from 110 to 125 ercent
p
and, then, if we have performance bonds -- it was written here to automaticall include
Y
the warranty coverage and under warranty coverage it talked about the
recommendations require warranty surety in the amount of 20 percent. So, I was 'ust
1
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 35 of 61
wondering if they get a performance surety 125 ercent do the a ' '
p y p y an additional 20
percent for the warranty or is that all one package for erformance and w ?
p arranty . Can
you explain that to me a little better?
Barnes: Yes. The bond itself covers the uidelines of the a ree
g g ment, so you would
need to have an agreement written that would s ecif exact) what is r '
. , p Y Y equired and, of
course, then, its underwritten based on -- the performance iece would
p be the 125
percent up until that job is accepted. Once the warrant oes into I
a re Y g pace your
g ement is going to say that you're only requiring 20 percent, so that the bond
drops
down to that 20 percent and follows that agreement.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, just to follow up. Ste hanie the could e
p y g t one bond, the
performance one, that says if we approve 125 percent and then that can '
. just roll over,
basically -- I don t know if that s the term, but into a warrant bond at a reduc
Y ed amount,
that money goes back to them and coverage continues for the rest of it.
Barnes: There is no money that actually goes back to them, the a a remium for
Y p Y p the
bond.
Hoaglun: Premium. That's right. That's right.
Barnes: But yes. Yes.
Hoaglun: I'm sorry.
Barnes: No. That's okay.
Hoaglun: Okay. Thank you.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: My question is more in terms of the performance of the contractor and with
the bond or the lack of performance from the contractor and the rocess and the
p
documentation that would be required from this case from the city in order to initiate the
action and, basically, collect on the bond. It's certainly probably not 'ust sa in the
. J Y 9 Y
didnt perform their work, so --
Barnes: Right. The bond itself is actually given. to the city by the develo er. The
. p
contractor is not involved, since there is no agreement between the contractor and the
city. The developer may turn around and require bonding from his contractors on it
whether the contractors perform or not. It's his duty to make sure that the erformance
p
is done and to make sure that his contractors pay their contractors -- subcontractors
and such. So, whether they perform or not, the develo er has to come u with the
p p
money or find somebody else to do it and if they don't within the time period, ou can
Y
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 36 of 61
place a claim against the bond and have the bondin c '
g ompany step in. Does that
answer your question?
Rountree: Somewhat. I understand the relationshi with '
. p the bond, but in our case,
probably working directly with whoever rovided the bond ~ '
p ,even though either the
developer or the city held the bond, what -- what rocess h
p as to be invoked in order to
make that --the terms in the bond come true?
Barnes: It's placing a claim with the suret com an . The sure '
. Y p Y ty company assigns a
claims adjuster that steps right in -- like I said, tried to remed betty '
y een the two parties.
If they are not able to do that, they actual) have the ex ertise --
Y p they have other
contractors that can bring on board immediately and take over that so that '
you dont
have to manage that project.
Rountree: Thank you.
De Weerd: Any other questions from Council?
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Stephanie, just your expert opinion.
are 20 percent now?
On the surety warranty bond, you said we
Barnes: That's what they are proposing.
Bird: Do you think that's enough? I don't. I don't. I mean it's harder to redo somethin
than ' ' g
it is to do it new. It costs more to redo it than it does to do it new.
Barnes: Right. I think that's probably something that you u s will be able to show
9Y
through their facts and figures that they come up with and make a decision on that
probably betterthan (could answerthat question.
Bird: Thank you.
Barnes: Yeah.
De Weerd: Good political answer. Thank you.
Barry: So, Stephanie will be around to answer additional questions as we 'ust finish off
. J
the presentation. Really, dust one or two other slides here with re and to the formal
g
recommendation. Under the warranty surety, as you folks have already alluded -- it
sounds like you have gone through the paperwork here. We did want to re uire the
a
developers of secure warranty surety for 20 percent of the actual cost of construction
that we extend the warranty period from one to two years in length. That's to cover the
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 37 of 61
full four seasons and to allow time for build up of the homes or whatever it is to utilize
the infrastructure for that four season period and, then, also. time at the end to reconcile
any problems or differences. We want to add an inspection at the 20 month eriod of
p
that time frame, so that we do have four months to reconcile any additional issues or
whatnot with the warranty period. We currently, just so you know, for the last 18 months
have been subsidizing private development off of consulting fees to insure that we are
protected with regard the inspection. So, what we would like to do is reconcile that and
put that cost back where we believe it belongs and that's on a developin communit
g Y,
so that the inspection fee for the warranty inspection is covered by the develo er. To
. p
do that we are recommending that, essentially, we would have a seconds ins ection
rY p
fee at the front end when they pull their permit, essentially. Pretty strai ht forward but
9 ,
we would need to get your concurrence on that. And, then, allow the followin suret
. g Y
options for the warranty. That warranty bonds, a letter of credit, cash, or cash
equivalent. So, from a warranty perspective we feel that those recommendations would
shore up both legal and financial liability that we currently have experienced and would
likely experience going forward. With regard to performance sureties, we believe there
is two small changes that should be considered. The first is to increase the
performance surety amount from the UDC amount of 110 percent to the 1.25 ercent
p ,
kind of, Mr. Bird, stemming off of what you just said is this actually goin to cover costs.
. g
We want to be reasonable. Again, insurance, as you know, is one of those thin s
g
where you could pay -- overpay for a ton of insurance that you don't need, or real)
Y
underpay for insurance that you end up finding out you really need. So, how do ou
. Y
strike the balance. We have tried to use as much data as we could on our ro'ects to
. pJ
come up with these recommendations. Certainly to be more conservative you would
want, you know, to have a higher percentage amount. It's just that simple. But there
are impacts, of course, associated with the costs of acquiring those sureties. I think in
your packet I also put a spreadsheet with the help of Ms. Barnes, that described
premium rates and you will see they are not -- they are not outrageous, particular) if
. Y
you re looking at a warranty situation. And I have those here in the presentation as well.
If you would like to see them we can go through them. Lastly, if we -- we felt if we were
making a recommendation on the warranty side to allow a bond, we thou ht it would be
g
nice to make -- make the bond as a possible vehicle for performance as well. So, we
are just saying allow us to entertain the acceptance of bonds. We think that rovides
... p
greater flexibility for contractors who don't have to tie up credit, which is real) a ve
Y rY
very lucrative component of their overall strategy here, because it's difficult to et credit
. g
these days. And so, essentially, that s it with regard to our recommendation. If the
recommendations are supported there is a number of things we would have to do as a
staff. First of all, we would need to revise andlor create ordinances and fee schedules
enabling these recommendations. We'd have to update our development a reement
9
template to reflect the numbers that we have discussed. We need to revise the
Meridian supplemental specifications under which Public Works construction ro'ects
p1
are constructed, whether they be private or public. Update our contract documents, as
well as modify our bid specifications and other applicable documents, so that we reflect
a two year warranty period for both public and private projects. And then, final) ,
y
develop a surety agreement template, which would be used for private develo ment
p
projects and, essentially, allow for the contract to be set up between the city and the
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 38 of 61
developer for the acceptance of bond. Now, a ain, we are not re uirin '
g q g bonds in any of
these cases, we are making available a number of different suret o tions
y p ,bonds, cash,
letter of credit, that the developer can choose on their own to utilize which v '
ehicle they
want. So, essentially, that's it for our presentation and I, Ms. Barnes and the s '
tall wi I I
stand for any questions might have.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Tom, I got a couple. First of all, reasonin for 20 on warrant and --
. g y well, I really
agree with your 125 on performance. Reasoning on 20 onl on warrant .
Y Y
Barry: It's a fantastic question, Mr. Bird, and I threw u this Exhibit C here in
p the event
you --one of you had the question. If you look on the left column here ou will see sort
Y
of what -- what our mode of thinking was with regard to how we came u with th
p at 20
percent. The basis is based upon a formula, if you will, and that formula is what
percentage of the project needs to generally be redone and what we did is we looked at
several projects that we had problems with in the past and we said of the overall ro'ect
. p1
how much of it would generally need to be redone and we of estimates down from
, g
four, five, six percent of the project needs to be redone to 30, 40 ercent of the ro'ect
p p1
needs to be redone. When we looked and we averaged we said, look 20 ercent
. ~ p ,
probably makes sense to start out of the gate with. We didn t want to be over) hi h
be " Y 9 '
cause we were trying to be sensitive as we try to shore up the concerns that we have,
but we also didn't want to be grossly low either. It's really tou h to sa on an articular
g Y Yp
project what the amount's going to be, because our projects are so different. If ou take
. Y
the first case study, for example, that project had huge sewer mains that were 18 to 20
feet deep. Now, that's a very different cost structure to replace that bell over ten feet in
. Y
that situation versus to replace a ten foot belly in a four or five foot dee sewer s stem.
p Y
So, you know, you got to consider a number of different factors. We tried to be
moderately conservative, but not overly aggressive in the recommendation. In an
. Y
event, so we came up with this sort of rework amount of -- excuse me. It's 15 percent of
the total construction cost, plus any add-ons and we said, okay, well, there are oin to
. g g
be add-ons. There is an economic inflation add-on, which is, you know, etroleum
p
prices go up and go down, that impacts the pipe prices, it impacts asphalt prices, it
impacts a number of different things. If you go to get an asphalt bid ri ht now the will
9 Y
only guarantee you 15 days on that bid. Otherwise, it's subject to rebiddin .There is a
g
project management cost, right? We have to manage the project just like anyone else if
we are going in to fix the problem. And this is based on sort of other projects that we
have a lot of experience working on. It's possible that could be low, dependin u on the
. gp
complexity of the project. Restoration. We know that restoring the purpose, ri ht?
g
Whether that be curb and gutter or whether that be landscaping or whether that be
asphalt and particular in new projects we are required by ACRD to do full width
restoration, so you can't just go in and trench a four or five foot wide trench to et to
g
your sewer line, they want you to replace width to width. So, that's a cost, too, and we
said that would be about 15 percent. And, then, a contingent fee. This is kind of the
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 39 of 61
wild card. How -- are we high or are we low. Don't re '
ally know. So, we threw in ten
percent of a contingency and so if you use the calculation 'ust un
~ der there that you can
see where we took, essentially, the -- the rework amount and th
th en, we added each of
ese percentages of the rework amount, you get to about 21.8 ercent. '
. p We said we
would dust round it down to 20 percent and call it ood. And the
g n, I also gave you an
example here as well in your -- in your paperwork that showed how th '
at calculation was
done. It's a little bit complex. I mean you wouldn't ex ect an hin
p yt g different from Public
Works I m sure. But, regardless, we have iven it a lot of thou ht an ' ' '
g g d it s quite possible,
Mr. Bird, we could be low, but we also didn't want to be over) hi h. '
y g So, really, this is
the process we used and its really a policy decision from here.
Bird: It's -- Tom, the thing is whether you're 20 or 50 ercent it's oin to be '
p g g added into
the cost of the fob right up front. The contractor is oin to add that in --
. , 9 g or the
developer. So, it s not that. You know, yeah, maybe sometimes ou will onl hav
Y y e to
do five percent of rework or something, but how man times are ou oin to have
Y Y g g do
70 or 80 percent of rework and you take a 500,000 job, which is nothin in sewer and
. g
water lines at times and start getting that, it dont take long. The nice thin about suret
. g y
bonds is you don't have to manage the rework on that, the bondin com an does it
9 p Y
and the other question I had, Tom -- and I don't know if you can answer it or Ste hanie
wi I I p
have to, outside of the bonds, it's --any other -- a letter of credit and all that an of
tha ~ y
t protected from bankruptcy . I don't know how it is. Maybe Mr. Na will have to
ry
answer that. I don t know.
Barry: Yeah. I'm not sure I can answer that, Mr. Bird. Mr. Barnes, it doesn't look like
she knows the answer to that question.
Bird: Can you, Bill?
Nary: Well, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I guess I'm not -- I'm not sure what
your question is, Mr. Bird.
Bird: Okay. You get a letter of credit --
Nary: Okay.
Bird: -- or cash or something like that and the guytakesout bankruptcy before ou can
.. Y
get it swung over to the City of Meridian. That goes into the bankruptcy court, it don't
come to Meridian, does it?
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I believe the letters of credit are secured
to the city. We hold the letter of credit.
Bird: We hold the letter --
Nary: Right.
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 40 of 61
Bird: But it's based on his cash, am I not ri ht? That cash is n '
9 of in our name, the letter
of credit is in our name.
Nary: Mr. Bird --
Bird: All the time I have ever --
Nary: Yeah. The letters of credit basically are just an assurance from the bank '
that this
person has adequate funding.
Bird: Correct.
Nary: So, we haven't run into this situation when we have had bankru tc so I couldn't
p Y~
tell you if a bankruptcy court would consider that to be a part of the assets of the -- the
individual. Potentially I guess that is -- that is a risk that exists. I was oin to add
g g ,
Mayor and Council, I guess a couple of thoughts on what Mr. Bird has raised. I mean
we -- and this was I guess more from the risk management side in trying to fi ure out
g
whats the -- whats the appropriate amount. When we have had this discussion I know
everybody on the team has heard me say, you know, we are a hundred ercent
p
responsible for whatever is the problem once we own it. So, we are using this as a tool
to offset those risks. Obviously, we can -- we can request all of you to assure a
hundred percent risk coverage, so like we do a 125 percent of the original performance,
we certainly could have come and requested a hundred percent warranty for two years.
We felt that was probably a negative impact to the development community. I mean the
bonds are cheaper, but there is still a cost and we felt I guess in the analysis that the
likelihood of a hundred percent risk or a hundred percent failure is fairly small. So, in
trying to, then, narrow down what's the risk that we are trying to secure, we looked at
other -- other methods besides bonds. We could certainly require an a reement with
g
the developer -- essentially a new contract that they would bond for a portion and
contract to be responsible for up to a hundred percent of failure. Again, we would have
to -- as I think Mr. Barry has already stated, then, we would have to execute on that
contract and a bankrupt developer is probably not going to help you much. So, again, it
is trying to figure that out and it is really an estimate based on what Mr. Barry has
stated, based on the historical -- or at least the data that we could locate in our general
area of what other communities have experienced. But it's not to say that we may find
after a two to five year process that we are consistently finding failure -- and, again, I
think the desire is that we realistically aren't going to find failure to that degree, but it
could come back to this Council in two to five years and say we are experiencing an
average of 30 percent failures when we have a failure. We don't have a lot of failures.
When we do it averages 30 percent. We think 30, 35 percent is more appropriate. But
right now we felt to be fair and balanced with the development community we really
need to pick something based on the best data that we had available. So, I would -- I
would totally agree with you, Mr. Bird, I mean there is certainly a risk to the city to not
secure a hundred percent warranty, but we didn't feel that in the balance of things that
was areasonable -- a reasonable thing to put back from the development community
and based on at least the best material and information we had we felt 20 percent was a
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 41 of 61
fair recommendation, but I think as Mr. Bar 's stated it's '
. rY certainly subject to the
discussion of this group and what your preference is in oin forwar
g g d.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: And that's what I'm getting at, Bill, is 20 percent ou're oin to a -- ou'r '
Y g g p y y e going
to pay your premium anyway and the city is going to pa for it. That's added ri ht in
. Y g to
the bid or a lot of times in the private industry they pa our -- the will 'ust a
Y Y Y 1 p y your
premium for you for a bond. So, what's the difference of that whether -- it's a hundred
percent, because all it takes is one of those that's 80 or 90 ercent o bad that kill
p g s you.
You re spending the rest of your -- it's not like we are loin 20 or 50 million dollars
9
worth of contract work every month or something. I just -- I real) -- while I could bu
. Y Y
20, I would sure like to look atgoing alittle -- at least a little more than that, like 50. But
I'm just afraid that our taxpayers are going to get -- well, our taxpa ers or rate a ers
Y pY ,
whoever they are, they are all taxpayers.
Barry: Mr. Bird, I very much appreciate your comments and we stru led with this for --
g9
Bird: I knowyoudid.
Barry: --quite awhile. We had it as high as 30 percent atone point in time and felt ve
rY
good about that number, but also felt without an enormous amount of data, 30 ercent
. p
may be a little too high out of the gate to start. So, we are definitely supportive of
anything between 20 and 30. I also would say let's look at regionally what's going on as
well. We want to be competitive and we want to benchmark ourselves, we believe,
against what other jurisdictions are doing as sort of a ground truthing and, you know,
really, what you see -- you do see a trend of more jurisdictions going to a two year
warranty period and you do see a higher warranty amount, particularly in the highway
districts. Particularly in Canyon County, to be quite frank. They are requiring as much
as 50 percent. Now, I did want to clarify one comment I believe you made, which was
the fact that this would be added to the city's cost or whatever. What we are talking
about here specifically is private development and these costs will be borne by the
developer, so they are the ones who are going to have to pay the premium, not the city.
This is not a public project, it's a private project where the developer is --
Bird: Whoever is paying for it is paying for that bond.
Barry: Correct.
Bird: Whoever had the final. When we buy it from them or to take -- if we buy it from
them, then, we pay for it. If they give it to us and we take it over, then, they pay for it.
But I can tell you that -- that contractor -- it's not coming out of his ocket, it's bein
p g
added to his bid.
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 42 of 61
Barry: Yeah. My sense is that the develo er would bear '
p the cost on the private
development project and the contractor, if the are re uired to h
Y q ave a bond, that bond
would be between the contractor and developer, we would not be a '
party to. That s a
different type of bond that, yes, the contractor would ass robabl
p , p y, the cost onto the
developer, so the developer was covered. What we are talkin abou '
g t is covering
ourselves for any actions the developer may take whether it was caused '
by their
contractor or otherwise and, again, we believe that that cost would be borne b
. y the
developer. There is no reason the city -- for the cit to bear that cost whi '
. , . Y ch is why,
again, we were trying to be cost sensitive about the recommendation, while also t in
to cover wh ~ ~ ~ ~ g
at we thought was the bulk of the risk. Its true, Mr. Nary, is absolute) ri ht.
Weareah Y g
unfired percent liable all the time, but we wanted to balance that a ain kind
of th g
e information we have now and we would certainly entertain a hi her amount but
g ,
you know, that's got consequences, too, so --
Bird: I can go for the 20, but I'd sure like to just see bonds.
De Weerd: Well -- and, I think we need stronger statistics on failure rates and before
you get too carried away.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree. Tom, you talked about in your presentation that ou have
Y
created this surety team and you worked with options. My question is did you look at
otheroptions otherthan surety?
Barry: I depends on what you mean by surety. What we looked at from a suret
. Y
perspective was a number of different surety vehicles, cash, letters of credit, CDs, and
in this case bonds. Those were the things we looked at. If you're meaning somethin
g
other than that, I m not sure I can answer in the affirmative.
Rountree: Okay. Well, what I'm thinking -- and it's just kind of came across when you
started talking about the process and the scenarios where we got ourselves in a pickle,
it all boils down to what seems to me a -- a desire on the part of the city to -- to accept
or gain ownership of these facilities before it's time and it seems to me that an approach
-- and I can in my mind see all the disadvantages of doing this, but leave that warranty
period in the hands of the developer and the city not take ownership until two ears after
Y
we have done a warranty inspection and, then, take it. Until that time it belongs to the
developer. Work out something in the development agreement that the homeowners
association owns it until that time and that they have to convey it by standards and by
performance to the city within that period. The developer bears all the costs, the city
has no exposure and so we don't have this one hundred percent liability all the time. I
still see -- you know, I can still see disadvantages of that, but there is disadvantages in
the surety and the disadvantages there, particularly in these times, is that's more cost to
the developer and I have already heard comments that, you know, you had the group
together, but I have heard comments that the city is looking at making development cost
even more. So, I had played with those kinds of concepts in the process.
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 43 of 61
Barry: Yes, sir, and I appreciate the comment and uestio
q nand in that particular case
that was an option we did look at. So, I'm clear now what ou --
. y what you meant behind
other options other than surety. We wrestled with that o tion f '
p or quite awhile, as a
matter of fact, and we thought that was our silver bullet if ou will. If '
. Y the problem is
accepting ownership and now we are on the hook, wh not 'ust defer '
Y 1 accepting
ownership and let them deal with it. The problem is, as it sounds like ou h
y ave worked
through your head a little bit, we have kind of of the same issues and '
9 we worked with
legal on this as well. One of our biggest concerns is who owns an
d operates --
particularlyoperates that system and if we are issuing permits to build and certifica
tes of
occupancy to occupy in those areas held by private systems that are connected to our
system, there seems to be a great sort of problem with the re ulato a encies
. g ry 9 ,
particularly the EPS -- or the EPA on our NPDS permit for dischar es to our s stem.
9 Y
For example, a sanitary sewer overflow in the kind of a case, as we have ex erienced i
p n
private lift stations, was something we were held responsible for. So, those violations in
those situations are going to be things we are still responsible for, whether we acce t
p
the project or not once it's connected to our system. The connection itself is almost the
acceptance that in many cases the regulatory agencies look at. So, we could do that if
we didn't allow the connection to our water or sewer system, but, then, now ou have
Y
got an untested system that you can t warranty and inspect and insure that it works. So
I don't know, Mr. Nary, if you had anything else to add, but we did sort of s in our
. p
wheels greatly on that particular issue and found that it didnt work out in our case so --
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I would concur with what Tom is sa in .
. Yg
I mean that -- that was our desire, but because of the problem -- and ou folks all
Y
recognize we have had this issue with private systems and we have ended up takin
9
over those lift stations around town for the exact reason that Tom is talkin about. We
.. 9
have a liability to the discharge anyway. So, even if we didn't own the s stem, we are
.. .. Y
avoiding one level of liability to really just take on a different one that we have no control
over. So, we felt that again, balancing the two we would rather have control over what
comes into our system, we would rather have control over how it's maintained, how
things are discharged to it, and not end up -- otherwise, we will end up with rivate
p
agreements, we have to execute on those -- I mean it's just a different can of worms.
Again, I understand exactly where Councilman Rountree is coming from. In t in to
,. ryg
assess this is a very difficult one to assess the risk on. It appears other communities
have gone from 110 percent to --from warranty down to nothing, to 15 percent, and so
it is a moving target. I totally understand that. But we felt that, again, after vetting all of
the different options, some warranty surety was appropriate, it is a development cost
that doesn't exist today. So, the criticism or the comment that any of you may have
received from anyone that we are adding cost of development, part of the reason we felt
comfortable in making that recommendation to you was we are also giving up a little on
the other end and by making a recommendation that they can also get a warranty bond
on the performance side, which they can't do today. So, they are -- they are asked to
increase their performance bond by 15 percent, but the ability to bond for it, instead of
writing a letter of credit, is a huge financial incentive for many, and, then, the additional
cost of warranty, although it is a cost, when you offset the two and ou look at it as a
Y
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 44 of 61
package, we still think it's a very com etitive develo men '
p p t environment that we are
creating as we transition from where we are toda to where we th' '
. Y ink we are going to be
in two to three years. I hope that answers your uestion.
q
Rountree: I think I answered my question m self I 'ust wanted
Y 1 to ask the question did
you look at it.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Question for Tom. I'm wrestling with Councilman Bird's uestion a
. q bout, you
know, is 20 percent enough and if you can walk throu h for me --and it's -- as A
. 9 ttorney
Nary said, you know, we look at risk management and what are the risks and ou u
have I Y g Ys
ooked at scenarios and actual cases. When a system is bein built ou u s --
g Y gY
you have inspectors in the field that inspect it as it's being built; is that ri ht?
9
Barry: Correct.
Hoaglun: So, although sometimes you don't -- a sleeve is put in wron ,there is a bent
g
pipe, it can't be spotted until it's charged, it's operational, which, then, Burin the
9
warranty inspection that s when it shows up. Normally?
Barry: In many cases. Sometimes those problems show up on the initial final
inspection before we accept the project and, of course, we go throu h our rocess
9 p
where we have to make correction before we accept it. But once acce ted, es, there is
p Y
a period of use or nonuse or partial use that the systems sort of either settle in or et
. g
abused by say the builders who the developer sold the lots to. For exam le, we have
p
an enormous amount of problems with debris in the lines, okay? So, debris in the lines.
Where does that come from? We can't be certain, but it looks like the debris is
construction debris. We get concrete down in our manholes, we have had inches to
feet of concrete in our manholes, two-by-fours, we have had rags, we have had
everything you can imagine in brand new sewer systems that plug those lines up that
maybe, honestly, the developer didn't or wasn't responsible for. However, a builder who
they sold a lot or series of lots to came along and trashed the sewer system, so to
speak. Those are still things that are covered under a warranty and the person
responsible for that warranty is the developer. Well, excuse me, currently it's the
developer's contractor, which we have no relationship with whatsoever, we didn't
choose them, we didn't hire them, we didn't vet them, we didn't -- we don't have a
contract with them and that's what's creating partially the problem. So, those -- these
problems come from a variety of issues. Sometimes they are builder related, ou know
Y ,
poor management practices or whatnot. Sometimes vandalism on the systems that are
abandoned, we have a lot of that going on. Sometimes a poor compaction -- you know,
what we are worried about is our utility compaction and that's what we look for. But if
there is a problem from the top of our sphere that we look at with regard to the road
base or anything else or, for example, in some cases we have floods, ri ht so it's an
9,
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 45 of 61
irrigation system or a water main break in the actual develo ment that su er
. p p satu rates
the soils and creates weakness in the soils and subsidence that can caus --
e I mean
there is just a number of different things that can cause a s stem to fall out
Y of spec, if
you will. And we believe that's the job of the warranty and it's 'ust like this buildin
1 g or
anything else that you purchase, there is a warranty that comes with it because h
t ere is
a period of use that should be guaranteed to insure that what ou urchased is oin
Y p g gto
meet the needs for a least a certain period of time that's redictable and as we h v
p ae
seen in some cases, the warranty length of time and the guarantee for performin under
a warrant sc g
y enario are lacking.
Hoagtun: Madam Mayor and Tom. Then, really, it sounds like thou h there
w. g , are areas
ithin the whole system of that development, for exam le, had failure or would h
.. p ave to
be rectified. Its not necessarily the whole system that was installed but i
p eces and
parts that failed or didn't pass the warranty inspection that, then, would have to be fix
ed
at the cost of the bond -- then using the proceeds from the bond as o osed to r'
pp fight
now the rate payers have to pay for that.
Barry: Correct.
Hoagtun: Which to me I think is unfair, so --
Barry: Yeah. That's absolutely correct, Mr. Hoagtun. The -- the t ical failure
. yp on a
project is not widespread failure, it tends to be an isolated spots. It could be cracked
T's, it could be a belly in a portion of a line, it could be a manhole connection it co I
u d be
grouting issues, it could be debris and that's why we don't think a hundred ercent or
p
even 50 percent makes sense based upon the data we have now. We think eah
~Y
maybe as much as 30 percent. We have gone there, we have real) scrutinized it so
Y ,
we are comfortable somewhere between 20 and 30 percent we thou ht out of the ate
g g
until we had a little bit more data that we could really true u the number we would start
. p ,
a little bit more conservative to give benefit of the doubt, ou know to the develo er
Y ps
and contractors as we build more data behind substantiatin a number that mi ht be
. g g
higher. We didnt want to unnecessarily burden financial) the develo in communit .
Y pg y
We wanted to be very sensitive. We -- believe me, this has been difficult form team
Y
we are all very sensitive to any kind of increase in costs to any entit at this oint in
. Y p
time. We want to see development continue in this communit as much as an one
Y Y
else, so we are doing our best to balance that with the recommendation that we have.
Hoagtun: Thank you, Tom.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Stephanie, what would be the premium for 100,000 on a suret bond fora ood
Y g
contractor?
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 46 of 61
De Weerd: I'm sorry, you will need to --
Barnes: Did you bring that up? Oka . He brou ht
Y g up some sample rates here. It
totally depends on the financial backin and the ex Brien
. g p ce of the developer and you
will see here that we have got a breakdown, we did some '
sample rating and the range
is anywhere for the warranty portion one to three ercent '
p for the entire performance
payment and warranty bond, it can be one to five ercent --five ercen '
p p t is very odd, we
don t typically see that, that's for somebod who has had some '
Y problems in the past.
Bird: That would be a pretty bad financial.
Barnes: Right. Right. So, I see an average of about two ercent.
p
De Weerd: Does that answer your question?
Bird: It sure did, Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you.
Bird: Thank you, Stephanie.
Barry: And, Mr. Bird, also to add to that, we did put -- I did have staff o back and look
9
at a number of different protects and apply these premiums across the board to ro'ects
pJ
we had experience with in the past to determine what the cost er loss would be and
p
thats what you see on the very right-hand column. If you were to o after 'ust the
g J
warranty bond, the cost per loss is anywhere between 20 dollars to 60 dollars on a lot
that has sold typically for anywhere between 30 and 75 thousand dollars in the cit . So
. Y ,
we feel, yes, there is a cost, but that that cost is not necessarily oin to break the bank.
g g
Easy for us to say, I understand every penny counts at this point in time, but we also are
stewards of the public's funds and that's -- we need to be sensitive to that --that cost on
our citizens as well. And one last thing. On the performance bond o tion if a
p ,
developer did choose to not build the improvements and purchase a erformance bond
p ,
that performance bond premium that you see here would cover the erformance eriod
. p p
of the bond and would include the two year warranty period whenever the cit acce ted
Y p
the actual project. So, these are mutually exclusive costs. Does that make sense? If
you're going a performance bond option, you're not going to have to a the warrant
pY Y
bond premiums. If you're building the improvements yourself, such that ou do not
. Y
need to obtain a performance bond, then, you're only talking about acquirin a warrant
g Y
bond and even, then, this goes back to the question of cost. You don't have to et a
g
bond in any of those cases. If you want to front cash or if you want to et a irrevocable
g
letter of credit, you can do that through your bank, the problem is you're t in u that
Y g p
credit for whatever period we -- you folks choose to cover the risk, whether it be a one
year warranty period or a two year warranty period. So, we felt that this was a ve
. rY
flexible series of options that we have provided the developing communit ,while also
. Y
being cost conscious and sensitive to the risk and liability to our taxpa ers and rate
Y
payers.
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 47 of 61
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: First, thank you to you and our stafffor not onl r' '
Y y b inging the subject up, but
working out the recommendation. A question I uess about timin '
9 g. I m assuming that
the two year warranty period --the clock starts the da that we s
. y ay accept ownership of
this and we dont accept ownership unless we think it's workin cor
g rectly on that day, so
anything we find in the first inspection they would have to remed before '
y we said, okay,
we accept and, then, that two year period starts. Where m uestion oes I uess i
Yq g g , s
whoever the underwriter or the bond or even the other kinds of sureties a I '
etter of credit
and stuff, if we have a development before, as we have several now that st '
arted like
four years ago or five years ago and, then, have to take a ause the are filin '
p y g for time
extensions, so we know they are not going away, how Ion will the bondin a enc wai
. g 9 g Y t
until that period starts?
Barry: The period of the warranty starting?
Zaremba: Yeah.
Barry: Yeah. I would defer to Ms. Barnes on that. Do you know? I'm not sure on that
question, but --
Barnes: This is something that we did address and it can be difficult. I do have
companies that have subdivision bonds that are still out there that are -- have been
renewed ten years. And there is an additional remium eve time w
p ry a have to renew
the bond, waiting for that warranty period to begin. So, you know, it de ends on the
p
bonding company and the financial status of the contractor -- or the develo er as to
. p
whether or not they will continue renewing that is. So, that is somethin ou run into
9Y ,
especially with the warranty bond, you could have somebody put up a CD at the end
decide they want to put up a bond and they may not be able to qualif at that oint so
.. Y p ,
then, they would have to make a decision to do a letter of credit or -- or some other t e
. Yp
of surety. But the bonding company has that ability to say we are not oin to lend ou
g g Y
after a certain point. So, that is something you run into and that is somethin ou need
gY
to address in your agreements. You would need to make that decision to draw down on
that bond prior to allowing that to expire. Does that answer your question?
Bird: I think so. Thank you.
De Weerd: Good question. Any further questions from Council?
Bird: I have none. Very good presentation.
De Weerd: Okay.. Thank you so much.
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 48 of 61
Zaremba: Madam Mayor, not real) a comment '
Y , but I would just say I appreciate the
recommendations and like others my instinct sa s, oka ma b
tha Y Y~ y e it ought to be higher
n 20 percent, but I am happy to accept the thou ht that w '
g ent into the -- where you
got to 20 percent, knowing as Mr. Nary mentioned ou will con ' '
.. , Y time to monitor this and
if in a couple of years you have to come back and sa it sh
y ould have been 30 percent or
something, at least we have got the system started and we are fixi ' '
ng the deficiency that
has existed up until now and I appreciate that.
Bird: Madam --
De Weerd: Yeah. Mr. Bird.
Bird: As we move forward in the next steps, Iwould -- I would like to '
see a public
hearing regarding this, whether it's required or not. I think it would be ve s
ry mart for us
to because I'm sure there is some developers, builders out there that mi ht have
oth 9 some
er views that we are not thinking about now or we are not lookin at. I think that
.. 9
would be very good. But I definitely think we need to get this oin ahead and et it in
9 9 g
place.
De Weerd: And I guess I know Public Works has been historical) ve ood abou
. Y rY g t
dotting the I s and crossing the Ts and the groups you go and s eak to that robabl
p p Y
the developer's council, the BCA, would be a good place once ou have that draft
. Y
ordinance to bring it to -- and maybe even bring some of the eo le in on our
p p Y
committee that can help with questions, certainly Stephanie. She can o on the travel --
9
the travel show with you.
Barry: Thank you, Madam Mayor and Councilman Bird. We would be ha to take it
. ppY
to those groups.. We did think about doing that earlier, i.e., as art of this rocess
p p
leading up to where we are tonight. However, the builders council does not seem to
have a vested interest in .this, because we are talking about land develo ment and not
. p
construction of buildings, so that group did not seem to make sense to have at the table.
We are certainly open to asking them to come to the table. There ma be some nexus
Y
between them and the developers they purchase a lot from that ma need to be
Y
explored, so we are happy to do that, but that was intentional, because we didn't feel
that there was -- that they really had a dog in the fight, so to speak. And I certain)
Y
appreciate Mr. Birds recommendation fora public hearing. I would also
recommendation that. I know that the developers we spoke to are uneasy in some
cases about this and -- and a couple of them are just not supportive and we -- I
understand and appreciate that. They have, nevertheless, been instrumental in
challenging us and helping us to refine our ro osal and make it what is to '
p p day, which
we think is the best recommendation we have with everything considered. So, if there
are no other questions, I would ask for some sign of support with regard to the
recommendations and maybe some sort of motion or otherwise to direct staff to work on
the next steps, just so we know that we are in alignment with the Council's wishes and
don't necessarily bring something back that doesn't meet your expectations.
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 49 of 61
De Weerd: There is no guarantees.
Barry: That's true.
Hoaglun: Well, Madam Mayor, I don't know if we need a m
otion on that or just
comments, but my thinking is this is -- a lot of work has one into it and it's be
g en good
work, I think it shows a need, you know, because of the econom we h
y ave had some
developers that have gone bankrupt and we have had some roblems
p dumped in our
laps and -- and that means the rate payers have covered those costs an '
d I just don t
think that's fair, I think you guys have worked Ion and hard to come u with
9 p a syste m
that allows some flexibility and like Councilman Bird I would like to hear fr
om the
developers and -- and that may change my mind on a few thins ma be ''
g , y it s
percentages, maybe it won t be, but I think we need to move forward with this and make
sure it's publicized and let's hearfrom folks and see what needs to be done next.
Rountree: I second that motion.
Bird: I third it.
Zaremba: Fourth.
De Weerd: I think you have good direction.
Barry: We have what we need. Thank you all for your time. This has not been the
easiest of topics to get your arms around as seems almost every Public Works to is is
p
that way, but we do appreciate your engagement and certainly our insi hts and
.. Y g
definitely your support. So, thank you again.
D. Public Works: New Street Lights for School Walk Routes
De Weerd: Thank you, Tom. And team. Okay. Item 8-D is also Public Works. I see
Tim walking up. I don't --
Watts: One of the things that I also wanted to ask is it makes sense for us to -- if we are
asking the development community to go through the same process that we should ask
our own contractors that we hire for our own sewer and water lines to meet those same
standards, so I would like you -- I'd like to make it part of the recommendation that we
also do the same with our own public projects as well as far as the two year warrant
Y
and the warranty bond.
Bird: Why would you be different?
Watts: Exactly. That's what --
Bird: And we make them have a performance bond, don't we?
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 50 of 61
Watts: Correct. We do not have a warrant bond --
Y
Bird: We don't have a warranty bond.
Watts: Yes.
Bird: How can you do it to a developer and not do it to somebod else?
Y
De Weerd: I think it's worth making a parallel process to make those similar.
Watts: Great. Thank you.
De Weerd: Okay. Tim.
Curns: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I wanted to come before ou this
. Y
evening and ask for a little bit of guidance and input on something that I have been
working on. Back almost a year ago now we had discussions about the ossibilit of
p Y
doing new streetlight installations at some point in the future and so at that time what we
had just discussed was kind of high level looking at the whole city, lookin at whole
9
corridors and that sort of thing and it seemed like there was a desire that if we were
going to go the way of installing new lights we would want to be much more focused
and look at specific problem areas, so I have delved into that --
De Weerd: Hey, Tim, can I interrupt you fora moment?
Curns: Sure.
De Weerd: Mr. Barry, just when you give Council packages prior to City Council
meetings, make sure you get it to the city clerk, too, so we can have it part of the public
record going into the meeting.
Barry: Absolutely, Madam Mayor. I apologize for that. Unfortunately, I took matters
into my own hands this time, as I'm without an administrative assistant and wasn't
aware of that, so I hand delivered those myself and overlooked giving the city clerk a
copy. I apologize. We will get you a copy if you don't have one already.
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you. And I apologize for interrupting.
Curns: Not a problem. Anyhow, I kind of delved into looking at more specific areas --
problem areas and a possible plan and I just wanted to bring that back to Council and
see if you think that maybe I'm going in the right direction or the wrong direction or
advise me of any other things to look into. So, in looking at -- at specific locations and
kind of what is .the worst scenario in a -- on a dark street, it's probably your pedestrian,
cyclist, versus vehicle interactions which are the nasty ones. So, really the busiest
locations in the city for pedestrian, bicyclist activity tends to be school zones and school
walk routes. So, that's what I have really been focusing on gathering information about
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 51 of 61
and a lot of the schools in -- we have got a cou le different thins '
p g going on that
elementary schools tend to be a little bit later in the mornin so it's littl '
g, a bit lighter out,
so -- and they also tend to be embedded a little bit more into the nei hborhood '
g ,which
have slower speed streets and better sidewalk facilities and whatnot. N
. ow, when you
look at middle schools and high schools, we are seein that there is a lot f '
g o kids walking
during morning commute, it's dark out, it's general) somewhere in th ~ '
Y e 7.00 o clock
range, you know, almost 7:00 o'clock, beyond that hour. And so the corridor I u
that kind of o e ~ g, ess,
p pp d up in looking at whats going on is Linder Road and its an
interesting road to begin with, just because it has so man schools alon i
Y g t and school
walk routes that go down it or across it. It also has all the bus barn traff'
is that gets
dispatched up -- transfer trucks from SSC headed to the -- the landfill th
e commute --
it's aheavy commuter route, so it's got a lot of interestin -- it's 'ust a ve '
. g j ry busy corridor
and it has a lot of schools on it and I don't know how man of ou are fami ' '
.. Y Y liar with
driving up and down that in the morning, but it can be interestin the -- es eci
. g p ally down
at the high school with all of the student drivers and the hu a amount of eo le th
g p p at a re
walking up and down Linder and crossing. So --
De Weerd: My kids walked that for years.
Curns: Yes.
De Weerd: Uphill both ways.
Curns: In the snow. So, school zones I was focusing on and as I mentioned that kind
of pops up as the -- that's the hot spot for schools. I also looked at a cou le other
. p
school walk routes, including Lewis & Clark out along Pine, which is actual) rett dark
. Yp Y ,
it doesnt have a huge -- it borders on industrial, so it doesn't have a hu a walk route.
. g
When I say walk routes I -- I dont mean just whats within the flashin beacons of the
g
school zone, but where the kids are actually funneling down to et to the school. So
9 ,
that's -- that's what I have been looking at and we have actual) had some com taints
Y p
about a couple of those areas, one of them being Rocky Mountain Hi h School and the
. .. g
fact that thats a five lane facility, there is no crosswalk, which is somethin that's one
g g
back and forth at the traffic safety committee, as Mr. Nary can attest to and a
particularly dark stretch, higher speed, doesn't have a school zone, because -- or school
zone speed reduction, because it's a high school. And,then, also the location -- or the
stretch down from kind of the Chateau towards Pine area is also seein a lot of
9
accidents as well. So, anyhow, thats kind of been my focus and I have looked at some
kind of high level what could be done about it, but I haven't really gotten into too much
detail yet, because I wanted to see if the Council thought this was a ood direction to
9
head. Should we go that direction at some point in the future. So, I uess with that if
. g
there is any questions about what I have have been up to?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, just to comment. I had a chance to talk to Tim about this
when we were -- we sat down to go over his budget. The budget was onl , ou know a
YY
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 52 of 61
ten minute discussion. I think we spent more on this to '
pic than the budget, but to me I
thought Tim made a very good case on focusin on tho
g se -- referred to as safety zones
where those kids are walking and bikin to middle school.
g 8th Street was the one we
talked about, that that work is movin forward. So that w '
g as a big need thats being
addressed. And, then, so where do you o from there. That '
g Linder corridor -- he made
a very good case when you look at the map of the schools of Meridian '
. High School to
Linder to Sawtooth, to Rocky Mountain, there is a lot of stude '
nts in that -- in that corridor
and lighting -- you know, the standards that have been in lace hav
. p e changed over the
years and there is older areas and there is new areas and it's kind of her
e, there, and
somewhere nowhere. So, to me I thought he made a rett ood case for '
p Y g that Linder
area to focus on and we don t have a big budget for street li htin but to m
g g, e I thought
he made a compelling case forthat.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I would also agree that -- especially around the middle schools because th
kids -- I thin ~ ose
k they come the earliest and you re talking about 11 and 12 ear old sixth
Y
graders, seventh and eighth graders, and most of them need to ride bikes or walk. I
think anything we can do within ourbudgetto light it is definite) a hel .
Y p
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Thank you. I think you're answering the question that we asked when ou
be ' ' Y
gan this is what are the priorities, what are the specific things that need to be looked
at first. It doesn't mean there might be a -- not be a second level or riorities after we
.. p
address these, but you re providing the information that we were lookin for, but the one
. g
thing (might -- suggestion or question as we look at funding, since ACRD has their
community programs going now, I might at some point ask ACHD whether some of
these might be projects that they could fund. I notice that Mr. lnselman has been sittin
. 9
through our meeting, I dont know if thats something he would want to attem t to
p
answer at the moment, but thank you for being here. But I was just going to su est
. gg
that part of the purpose is safe routes to schools and I think they have focused that on
sidewalks, but lighting might also be an issue that --that they might consider under that
program.
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Thank you, Madam Mayor. Tim, I -- we have talked about li htin and I
g g
agree you re kind of focusing on the -- the right things first and that's the unsafe areas
and I agree with Councilman Bird, I think the middle schools seem to be the tou hones.
. g
You do, however, bring up a sideline in your comments that I think I would like to see
you work with ACHD with, not only with the safe routes to school and the lightin ,but
g
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 53 of 61
you brought up school zones and the identification of school zones and I'm '
going to give
you two examples. I'm going to do two elementary schools and I'm oin to do two h'
g g igh
schools. One is Rocky Mountain. No speed zone. I think there is a crossw
alk. No
reduced speed limits. No flashing lights. Meridian Hi h School two s eed zon
9 p es that
go through an intersection, with bouncing flashin li hts on both those stre
. 9 9 ets.
Chaparral -- I believe it's Chaparral. Is that the one at Ten Mile and --
De Weerd: Yes.
Rountree: Yeah. Chaparral. No fewer than eight roadwa se ments with reduced
Y g
speed zones and school zone signing, complete with pedestrian actuated si nal that
. g
has the bouncing school crossing lights. Prospect Elementary on McMillan. No school
zone signing on McMillan, but a pedestrian and vehicle actuated light that connects the
subdivision to the north, which -- to the subdivision in the south where Pros ect resides
. p
and I do not believe there is even a speed zone demarcation on the entrance into that
subdivision where the school sits. So, to me there is a real disparity in the wa it's
Y
signed and, Gary, I dust don't understand -- I don't -- I'm not complaining, I just don't
understand, it doesn't make sense to me when I see these things and -- have we 'ust
1
forgot some or are there some particular cases that have a peculiar need? I don't know.
Curns: Councilman Rountree, that's a perfect discussion topic for our traffic safet
Y
committee and something that we -- we have the ACRD folks there who can help us
understand how those are laid out.
Rountree: I had asked a question about Chaparral as to why so many and why so
much. It still doesn't make sense to me, but I appreciate the safety and the need for
safety, but, boy, it's confusing to the motoring public, particularly headed north on Ten
Mile, you go through a school zone and, then, for about 400 feet you're out of the school
zone, then, you're in a school zone again.
Nary: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Nary.
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Tim and I think can effect getting more
of this on our traffic safety and it has kind of sort of been a school safety zone
commission on a lot of discussions and I can tell we have worked real well with ACRD
and some of it is actually the fact that -- and I agree with Councilman Rountree, it
doesn't seem like that's the time to discuss it, but we had a great deal of after-the-fact
discussion in the Paramount Subdivision regarding Paramount Elementary, because of
school zone concerns. ACRD did step up and they put up a number of school zone
signs in Paramount now. I can't remember, Tim, there has to be at least 20.
Curns: A surprising amount.
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 54 of 61
Nary: Yeah. At least 20 that were added into Paramount after the fact. We have had
discussions about Rocky and Linder and I, honestly, I think you could make a traffic
engineering case that you could make a school zone from Cayuse Creek all the wa to
Y
Peregrine Elementary and logically make it fit, but no one would ever -- no one would
ever observe it, because they would forget they are in a school zone. But to answer
your other question, we will -- I just sent an a-mail to Tim to -- that we could robabl
. p Y
add some of this discussion to our traffic safety meeting next week. As we et to the
., g
end of the school year it s a good time to have that discussion now as we et started
g
into the next school year, so they are on ACHD's .radar for their safe routes to school
program that they have and for the funding that's available for it. It does seem like
overkill sometimes as I drop my grandson at Chaparral that there is a lot of school zone
in that area, but some of it was at the request of the school, some of it was at the
request of the police. I will tell you, we kicked it around in traffic safety a Ion time,
g
especially the Cherry Lane ones, but, yeah, I think we have found it to be successful.
ACRD has been another -- a good partner in stepping up on those hoc si nals and
. g
putting them in locations that can be an asset to students being able to cross. So, we
will continue to work on that and bring back -- and I think Tim has got the ri ht idea, ou
g Y
know, we need -- we talk about a lot of traffic safety and making this reall a lobal
Y g
discussion and, then, we dont dust want to talk about the next school that ets built
. 9 ,
since we are not building a lot of schools right now, we should be able to start
addressing these in a more systematic way, so that Prospect and Rock and all these
. Y
various schools really have safe routes, which include lighting, include signals, include
signalization, includes school zones, include all of those things that we can then brin
9
back to the Council for recommendation and that ACHD can, then, take to their board
as well.
Rountree: And, Madam Mayor, for Bill and Gary's sake, I didn't make my comments to
complain, it's just -- it's a bit confusing.
Nary: No. I totally didn't take it that way at all.
Rountree: It's hard to explain to somebody when they ask you the question and ou hit
Y
on the only response that I could come up with and that's because ACRD has been
really responsive and when asked they have been providing these things, but ma be we
Y
need to take a look at it.
De Weerd: And, again, it goes back to when we stepped back, took a look at
standardizing speed limits in the city. Take that comprehensive look and, then, let's
figure out how we can learn from it, apply it to any standards as we look at school
placements and as new roads are coming in that those different measures are taken
into account as well. So, we are not having to go back. But appreciate ou brin in
Y 9g
that up and certainly traffic safety is the appropriate home for that discussion, as ou
Y
have all the key players at the table.
Curns: Absolutely.
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 55 of 61
De Weerd: Any other comments orfeedback you're lookin for?
g
E. Public Works: Discussion on Proposed Master License
Agreement with Ada County Highway District for Re ulation of
g
Downtown Sidewalk Areas
Curns: I think that's good for now, actually. I can 'um ri ht into the next to is if
J p 9 p that
works.
De Weerd: Okay.
Curns: So, the next item here -- do you need to announce that or are we ood?
9
De Weerd: You're good to go.
Curns: Okay. And do you all have copies of what was rovided hereon this next ite
p m.
I hope. Okay. So, this -- this agreement that you have before ou here is actual) on
. Y y e
that the city of Boise did with Ada County Highway District last summer and this i
s
something that came up in a working group that Public Works and Plannin have to kind
of g
work through a couple streetscapes -- streetscapes group, it's kind of -- we do a lot of
topics in there, but one of them was we were trying to kind of sim lif develo ment
pY p
processes with -- related to some of the standards that the city enforces and the -- for
the downtown area of Meridian, Meridian Development Cor oration has s ecifi
p p c
streetscape standards that whoever develops has to, you know, ut in the ark benches
p p
and the streetlights and the street trees and all that sort of thin . So that's somethin
g g
that the city enforces MDC and we realize that there was a -- there was a little bit mor
e
complicated process maybe than there could be with that. Now we asked the
developer to put in the specific treatments, they tend to be within the ri ht of wa
. g Y
downtown. A lot of times the right of way goes right u to the doors of the buildin s
p g
and, then, after we ask them to do that, then, they need -- have to o to the hi hwa
. g g Y
district to make sure that they can get approval to put those thin s in the ri ht of wa
g g Y
that we are asking them to put there, which it's just one more ste in the rocess and
. ., p p
especially if it s something like a street cafe, somebody comes in, the want to do a
Y
street cafe, we were to -- you know, they want tables out on the sidewalk that's in the
right of way, it has to go through ACRD for a license agreement rocess and then
. p ,
thats something we are working on them with. So, what this a reement did with the cit
. .. g y
of Boise is it Just kind of sliced off this little bit of responsibilit from the hi hwa district
Y g Y
and gave it to the city of Boise, whereabouts they have the abilit to -- it's kind of like
Y
one stop shop for that, where they have the ability to regulate the lacement of these
p
things within the right of way. It doesn't transfer any responsibilities, other than what we
already have for like sidewalks, for example, it's not -- it's not causin the cit to inherit
.... g Y
responsibilities with the sidewalk that normally would be between ACHD and the
property owner, that's simply regulating those things that might be within the ri ht of wa
. 9 Y
and that sidewalk area. So, we looked at this. We also gave it to -- I think we had Ted
Baird in legal -- was it Ted or -- it was Ted.
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 56 of 61
Nary: It was Ted.
Curns: Okay. Run through this. He took a look at it and, really, the next thing was we
wanted to see if the Council was interested in pursuing something like that before we
went any fartherwith it, so -- if there are any questions about this or concern?
De Weerd: Certainly like the one stop shop and where you can do all your business
and it's coordinated communication, basically, is certainly an advantage. Any
comments or questions from Council?
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Question on assignment of liability, I guess, on a decision that the city might
make in that particular portion of the right of way that's actually owned and -- by statute
ACHD's. Do we need to develop standards that provide safety guidelines for what we
might approve on the sidewalks and in doing so do we accept any potential liability
situation that might arise or do we share that with ACHD or does ACHD stand back?
That's the situation?
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, if my recollection is correct -- and I don't
have the agreement. in front of me. I think Ted sent it to me in a-mail, but I don't have it
right here. I think in working through those agreements with ACRD -- when ACRD
allows someone, essentially, a license to use the sidewalk for that purpose, they --they
don't accept the liability for either, because we are not talking -- I don't think we are
talking about just the streetscape improvement, I think we are talking also about -- like I
think Tim said, cafes and those other things that they have out there. My recollection of
those agreements -- the property owner maintains the liability responsibility for that --
those items that are out there. They simply are getting a license to put it there. The
streetscape stuff -- again, I don't recall in the agreement if -- if ACHD has the liability for
those items and Tim might recall better than I do right now, since I don't have it in front
of me, as to how they divided that. Do you recall, Tim?
Curns: I don't offhand. I know that what -- like the items you're discussing, those are
generally inherited by the city, the trees, the park benches, the streetscape.
Nary: Right.
Hoaglun: So, Madam Mayor, what I'm hearing is I -- if you put in benches and planters
and a car runs into, we replace the planter, it's not ACHD, it's whoever we deal with --
I'm unsure who that is. If there is a cafe out there we okay a cafe to -- similar to
Generations Plaza I would think where we allow permission, because ACHD has
granted us that license to do so, they still retain the liability for the actions that occur
within that fenced of area, not the city. But I think we would have to make sure that is
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 57 of 61
spelled out in any agreements with them, but certain) that would be s '
Y omething we
would place upon them. Is that how you see it?
Curns: Correct. Yeah. We would -- we are kind of ste in in --ACHD
pp g would normally
go through that license agreement process with the business owners to mak
e sure that
the business owner assumes liability for what the are loin in the ri ht
Y g g of way and so
since we are stepping into that process and we are asking the same thin of the -- of
the business g
owner.
Hoaglun: And Madam Mayor and Tim or Ga ,Bill -- and Iwould -- if
rY we have the
agreement -- if ACRD -- we have this master license a reement I don't know if w
9 e
would require them to indemnify ACRD as well as art of that or -- I'm '
p sure that s
something the legal folks will work out if this is the route we o. But som '
g ething to
consider if it's just indemnifying the city, because under this master license a r
g Bement
we now control that process or since ACRD is still .tied to that the would also have to
be ' Y
.included.
Curns: And ACRD does still -- I believe when I read throu h this last time h '
g , t ey still
reserve the right, of course, to remove something if they realize somethin is in a si ht
trig ~ g g
ngle, whatever, they are going to come out and remove that, so --
De Weerd: It looks like the city holds harmless ACRD and as ou su ested re uir
. Y g9 q es
any of its subleases -- sub licenses to carry general liabilit insurance. So there is an
. .. Y ,
indemnification clause and a liability insurance portion to this. Pa a three.
9
Rountree: Yeah. I have got it. Thank you.
De Weerd: Any other comments? Questions?
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Just a comment. This works forme. Sounds good.
De Weerd: Okay. So, is it Council's desire to have, then, staff come back with a
document that -- we will want to start working with ACHD on an a reement.
9
Rountree: Does it contain the infamous paragraph that the other ones we have been
looking at --
Nary: Not yet.
Rountree: Not yet? Okay. I think it's a good deal for the city and saves a lot of hassle
and process forfolks who want to utilize that area. So, I'm in favor of movin it forward.
g
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 58 of 61
De Weerd: Okay.
Hoaglun: I agree, Madam Mayor, it's a good wa to streamline the rocess
Y p and make it
easierfor everyone involved.
De Weerd: Okay. It looks like you have general a reement.
g
Curns: All right. Thank you very much.
F. Mayor's Office: Budget Amendmentfor Ma or's Office
y
Internship for aNot-to-Exceed Amount of $2,775.00
De Weerd: Thank you, Tim. Okay. Item 8-F is the Ma or's office. I will turn
Y this over to
Robert.
Simison: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. What ou h
y ave before
you tonight is a budget amendment for the creation of an internshi for the next six
p
months in the Mayor s office. Really what we have tried to do is model off the su
ccess
of IT, that they have had with their relationship with the technical charter sch
ool with
those internships -- is we are looking to use some of our rofessional services
p money
and transfer that to an internship for the next six months tot it out and see how i
rY t
might work for some of the additional videos that we have been loin in the Ma or's
g Y
Office. We are talking about this week in Meridian to celebrate Meridian and
even
perhaps doing some of the uploading of the videos that are created for Cit Council
Y
meetings right now to go into our website. Some of this is our technical skills that
students have that we have the capabilities of doing in our office, but this rovides us a
p
--another resource to do it, but at the same time if we ever don't have those resources
and look to hire those out those can be up to 75 dollars an hour to do some of these
basic functions. So, I felt that this would be a way for awin-win for us to use som
. e of
our existing resources to see if we can do an internship in our office to rovide some of
p
these services and, you know, find something that more and more eo le are
. p p
gravitating towards. For example, the This Week In Meridian we are seein an here
fr g ~
om 250 to 400 people viewing that either on the city's website or on the Facebook
webpage each week. And so that's what this amendment is and I'm ha to stand for
. ppY
any questions.
De Weerd: Council, I also might point out is that we are findin those --are the called
g y
B logs?
Simison: Yes.
De Weerd: But they tell the story a lot better than printed brochures or statements --
take, for example, the back flow tests, we put one of the water de artment's em to ees
p pY
on there, they showed the device, they explained it, it really is a three to four minute cli
p
of trying to share a message that is much easier and much more understandable to
understand in the video form than in printed text that eo le are stru lin to
p p g9 9
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 59 of 61
understand. So, as this has increased in popularity and its use, it certain) has been
. Y
taxing on staffs time, but also the internship, they have the technical ex ertise and it's
p
much less than using our professional services and hiring it out, so -- an uestions?
Yq
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Robert or Madam Mayor, either one, I'm ve su ortive of use of interns.
rY pp
They do a lot of things that you don't associate with value, but one of the thin s the do
. g Y
is they bring you new ideas and they bring -- they bring our em to ees new ideas and
pY
fresh ways to look at things, having a great amount of ex erience with an internshi
. p p
program, their value is -- far exceeds their cost. My question, thou h, is the re uire
. g Y q
direction and supervision and if you're going to have interns that are oin to be workin
g g g
in the technological IT arena, will they be supervised by IT and folks in IT even thou h
g
they would be assigned to activities within the Mayor's Office?
De Weerd: I think at this point we were -- Luke is loin all of that and also unloadin
. g g
the -- the City Council meetings onto the website and so it would be under Luke's
supervision.
Rountree: Okay.
De Weerd: Any further questions? Well, I'm looking for direction there.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I move we approve the budget amendment for Ma or's internshi for a not to
Y p
exceed amount of 2,775 dollars.
Rountree: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Madam Clerk will ou call
y
roll.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, ea.
Y
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
De Weerd: Thank you, Robert.
Simison: Thank you.
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 60 of 61
Item 9: Ordinances
A. Ordinance No. 11-1480: AZ 08-007 The Sho s '
p at Victory by
DMG-Eagle & Victory, LLC Located at 3210 S. Ea le
g Road.
Request for Annexation and Zonin of 4.79 Acres fro
g m RUT
Ada County) to C-C (Communit Business
. Y )
Zoning District
De Weerd: Okay. Under Item 9-A is Ordinance 11-148
0. Madam Clerk, will you,
please, read this ordinance by title only.
Holman: Thank you, Madam Mayor. Cit of Meridian Ordi
Y Hance No. 11-1480, an
ordinance AZ 08-007, Shops at Victory, for annexation of a orti
p on of land situated in a
portion of the northwest one quarter of the northwest one uart '
q er of Section 28,
Township 3 North, Range 1 East, Boise meridian Ada count '
y, Idaho, as described in
attachment A and annexing certain Lands and territo situated in A
rY da county, Idaho,
and adjacent and contiguous to corporate limits of the Cit of Meridi
th ~ ~ ~ ~ Y an, as requested by
e City of Meridian, establishing and determinin the land use zoni ' ' '
g ng classification of
said lands from RUT in Ada county to C-C, Communit Busine '
.. , , Y ss District, in the
Meridian City Code, providing that copies of this ordinance shall '
be filed with the Ada
county assessor, the Ada county recorder, and the Idaho State Tax Com '
mission, as
required by law, .and providing for a summary of the ordinance and r ' '
p oviding for a
waiver of the reading of the rules and providing an effective date.
De Weerd: Thank you. Ralph, you have heard this b title onl . Woul '
. Y y d you like to hear
it read in its entirety? Council?
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we approve Ordinance No. 11-1480 with sus ension of rules.
p
Rountree: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to a rove Item 9-A. If ther '
pp a is no
discussion, Madam Clerk.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoa lun, ea.
g Y
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 10: Future Meeting Topics
Meridian City Council
April 12, 2011
Page 61 of 61
Is there an to is forfuture agendas that you would like to bring to
De Weerd. Item 10. y p
this topic -- or discussion item?
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
ieutenant Overton from the Meridian Police Department if
Hoaglun. I did want to ask L
he had anything for a future topic.
rton: Madam Ma or, Members of Council, I don't know if that was to check and see
Ove y
if I was still awake, but I have nothing.
Hoaglun: Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you for your response.
Rountree: He's alert.
Bird: I was going to say, he perked right up.
De Weerd: It a pears we have none. I would entertain a motion to adjourn.
p
Rountree: So moved.
Bird: Second.
De Weerd: All those in favor? All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 9:08 P.M.
AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS)
~ ~.
~~~ ~..~,
`'Z`'4 ?° y .. 1 ` 1
~ ~ ~ .~ w ~
Od i ,
~ ~ ~~~~~ ~~ DAVE APPROVED
MAYOR:T MMY De WEE
'w ~ ~.
~, .~
[x. 7'~`r$~ .ra
+r r~; `~a
4.
ATTEST': P.,
~'~J ~ ~ ~; CITY CLERK
{ ~ ~ ~
~P~ g1
~ ; ^ 43 1~'