2012-07-10 BudgetVIE IDL[ANIS,:-1.--
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AMENDED
NOTICE OF SPECIAL MEETINGS
MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL
Mayor Tammy de Weerd
City Council Members:
Keith Bird
Brad Hoaglun
Charles Rountree
David Zaremba
NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the City Council of the City of
Meridian will hold Special Meetings / Workshops in the City Council Chambers at
Meridian City Hall, 33 East Broadway Avenue, Meridian, Idaho, on Tuesday,
July 10th at 8:00 a.m. and Wednesday, July 11th at 10:00 a.m. The Meridian
City Council will be receiving and discussing preliminary budgets and
presentations from each specific department of the City of Meridian towards
approving a tentative budget.
DATED this 25th day of June, 2012.
Meridian City Council Special Meetings — July 10-11, 2012
All materials presented at public meetings shall become property of the City of Meridian.
Anyone desiring accommodation for disabilities related to documents and/or hearings,
please contact the City Clerk's Office at 888-4433 at least 48 hours prior to the public meeting.
R
CITY OF MERIDIAN
CITY COUNCIL MEETING
AMENDED
SPECIAL
Tuesday, July 10, 2012 at 8:00 a.m.
City Council Chambers
33 East Broadway Avenue, Meridian, Idaho
Roll -call Attendance:
X David Zaremba
X Charlie Rountree
Adoption of the Agenda
X Brad Hoaglun
X Keith Bird
X Mayor Tammy de Weerd
City of Meridian FY2013 Budget Meeting Hearings
Break from
9:21 — 9:38 a.m.
Lunch Break from
11:21 —11:44 a.m.
Break from
12:55 — 1:16 p.m.
Adjourned at 2:25
p.m.
Meridian City Council Special Meeting Agenda — Tuesday July 10, 2012 Page 1 of 2
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.
City of Meridian
Budget Hearing Presentation Schedule
FY2013 Budget
July 10, 2012
8:00 am to 2:30 pm
Start
End
Minutes
Department
8:00 -
8:10
0:10
Council assemble, review any additional materials
8:10 -
8:30
0:20
CIP Presentation (SK), Revenue Presentation (SK)
8:30 -
9:00
0:30
Overall Budget (TL), Merit (BN)
9:00 -
9:00
0:00
No Enhancements - Building, City Clerk, Econ Dev, Finance, IT
9:00 -
9:10
0:10
Planning
9:10 -
9:25
0:15
Streetlights
9:25 -
9:55
0:30
HR, Legal
9:55 -
10:05
0:10
Break
10:05 -
10:25
0:20
City Hall
10:25 -
11:25
1:00
Parks Department
11:25 -
11:35
0:10
Mayor's Department
11:35 -
12:35
1:00
Lunch (Ordered In)
12:35 -
1:35
1:00
Fire Department
Police Department
1:35
2:30
0:55
Council budget decisions and discussion
Meridian City Council Special Meeting Agenda — Tuesday July 10, 2012 Page 2 of 2
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.
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Meridian City Council Budget iVleeting July 10, 2012
A special meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 8:00 a.m.,
Tuesday, July 10, 2012, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd.
Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, David Zaremba, Keith Bird, Brad Hoaglun
and Charlie Rountree.
Others Present: Bill Nary, Jaycee Holman, Stacey Kildenmann, Todd Lavoie, Bruce
Chatterton, Jeff Lavey, Mar, Niemeyer, Mollie Mangerich, and Dean Willis.
Item 1: Roll-call Attendance:
Roll call.
X David Zaremba X Brad Hoaglun
X Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird
X Mayor Tammy de Weerd
De Weerd: Good morning. This is a special meeting for City Council. I will go ahead
and get it started. For the record it is July 10th. It is 8:00 o'clock. We will start with roll
call attendance, Madam Clerk.
8:00 - 8:10 -Council assemble, review any additional material
De Weerd: On our agenda today is our budget workshops and so I will turn this over to
our finance director Stacy and have her kick us off.
8:10 - 8:30 - CIP Presentation (SK), Revenue Presentation (SK)
Kilchenmann: Well, here we are FY-13. So, hopefully, everyone had time to read the
opening comments, which are comments -- comics. So, before we start I want to thank
all the departments -- the Enterprise Fund isn't here, but including the Enterprise Fund,
for all the work they did to answer our questions, to review the budget. I think each of
you have met with your departments and went through the line-by-line item experience
with your department and the Mayor and, then, we went on and continued that with
enhancements, which I think everybody has shared with you and we scrubbed the
budget, as we usually do, and, then, the directors met and went through the General
Fund enhancements and decided what was going to go and what was going to stay in
order to balance the budget. Okay. So how do you advance this? Okay. So, what I'm
going to do this morning just briefly is review the revenue assumptions that we used to
build this year's budget. So, I have got two graphs here. The one on the top is the
General Fund estimated revenue of 31 point -- 32.1 million dollars. The difference in
this number -- between this number and the FY-2012 number is about 1.58 million
dollars. The change is principally in property tax, because this budget does include
taking the entire three percent allowable tax increase and we also have a three percent
new construction increase and we know what the new construction increase is now.
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
Page 2 of 95
We also -- I also up'd the development services revenue and based the budget for
FY-2013 on selling about 550 residential building permits. FY-12 was pretty
conservative. It was based on selling 450 residential building permits. Those are the
principal changes. A little more revenue in impact fees, which doesn't really affect the
overall budget, since those fees are restricted and, then, also a decrease in interest
revenue, since the interest rate -- interest earnings are about at zero. The Enterprise
Fund budget revenue is at 23.8 million dollars. This is just under a million dollar
increase from 2012. The difference is our usage sales are increased about two percent
and that's been standard over the past several years, about a two percent growth in the
number of accounts. The estimate 2012, it's about 1.5 percent over actually 2012
trending just a bit above budget. Connection fees or assessment fees are still at that
same 450 building permit level. So, that's basically what the whole budget is based on.
So, then, from -- there are some risks, of course, in this revenue projections. The short-
term revenue risks are legislative changes. And, for example, there was a -- this last
year we had House Bill 519, which another kind of an extension of the bill we had a
couple of years ago that has to do with retroactively exempting some development type
items. Last -- the one, of course, affected us retroactively and it was effective July 1st,
so that's kind of an immediate budget impact. Another one that would have a big impact
on us if they pass the personal property tax exemption. So, for example, if that passed
or was in effect, our FY-2013 revenue would be 800,000 dollars less. Our property tax
revenue. And, then, there is a variety of other exemptions for different property and
sales tax that have been on the table that have passed that would affect us. Another
risk is the courthouse revenue. Right now we get about 400,000 dollars in revenue from
Ada County. Depending on what happens with that situation, we could lose that
revenue source. So, now I'm going to switch long term. The Capital Improvement Plan
is going to be interwoven in the General Fund -- well, in the Enterprise Fund discussions
today, so we are going to be drawing in not only what we want to do next year, but what
we plan for the next five and ten years. But I want to talk a little bit about the long range
forecast and the long range risks. So, this -- both the long range revenue and the
current revenue are really still extremely conservative. My reasoning is there are some
things that we could call headwinds or things that mean that we probably aren't going to
be entering a period of great prosperity, at least in my mind. Of course, one of them is
the European economic crisis, including the slowdown in China, which significantly
impacts the U.S. manufacturing and market for our goods. The gridlock in Congress
creates what I know we have all been hearing about this, the falling off the cliff scenario
with the uncertainty over what's going to happen with the tax cuts stimulus program, et
cetera. We still have weak consumer spending and high unemployment and, then,
there is kind of a long range change in the market, which we are not necessarily going
to see today or tomorrow and even five years, but where the market's moving from the
concept of ownership to the concept of rental, so that doesn't mean we don't have
property tax, but it means the picture changes to more ownership -- to more ownership
by landlord. We will shift in the market more renting. And, then, we also -- the biggest
growing job sector is low paying service sector and retail jobs.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
Page 3 of 95
De Weerd: Yes.
Zaremba: Before you go on, Stacy, clarify for me, if you would, courthouse revenue.
Ada County doesn't not pay us anything out of the courthouse. Are you referring to
fines?
Kilchenmann: Yes. It's our portion of -- we -- we have lingoed it courthouse revenue.
But it's our share of the fine revenue.
Zaremba: Okay.
Kilchenmann: That's what it is.
Zaremba: Thank you.
Kilchenmann: So, I'm just going to look back at what -- over the last few years how
much money we have had available when we come and meet on this day to spend on
enhancements and other increases. So, this is a look at the General Fund going back
to 2006 with the blue part of the bar being the base revenue and it kind of just shows
how our base has grown and how our discretionary revenue has shrunk. So, the last
'13 --'12 and '13 there isn't very much difference in the base. They haven't grown very
much. Community development. I will look at their discretionary revenue and their
base with the kind of lighter blue being their base, so, obviously, their base has shrunk
-- the shrink -- most of the shrinkage is due to -- as building goes down, of course, the
contract inspector cost goes down and, finally, the Enterprise Fund, again, the blue
being their base and the yellow being their discretionary revenue. So, they have grown
just a bit in their base between '12 and '13. So, then, always the elephant in the room is
the tax levy rate. So, what's happened this year, because finally our taxable value is
going up again, that means our levy rate will go down again. And we have discussed
before that that relationship when taxable value goes up, the levy rate goes down. So,
this is just a look at history since 2006 to 2013. You can see where if you look at the
bottom graph it graphs our taxable -- our taxable value and our new construction, so
you can see as the taxable value goes up, levy rate down, taxable -- or down,, levy rate
up, and, then, the inverse value. So, our levy rate for '13, which includes taking the
three percent, is lower than it was in '12 and I -- in your revenue manual I also gave a
detailed description of that and I have extra revenue manuals, if anyone is interested.
So, then, just to talk about the assumptions in the long-term Capital Improvement Plan
funding, those were based on property -- new construction increasing two percent per
year. The city taking allowable base of three percent. And I have to tell you we did
attempt to do it without the three percent and we couldn't -- we could barely cover
replacements. So, we decided -- we went back in and added the three percent in.
Now, obviously, in all these discussions if we need to take or lower part of that property
tax we can. We just need to adjust the budget accordingly. Most other -- the other
General Fund revenues remain the same. So, we generally lost sales tax, franchise
fees, et cetera, about flat. The assumptions on the cost side of the operating and
personnel cost increase no more than three percent, which is outside of the CIP
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
Page 4 of 95
increase. So, for example, if we add a fire station we would have to add the salary or
the operating costs for the fire station. We do have some assumptions in there that we
have certain fund balances. So, over the five year plan we are using 4.8 million dollars
from the General Fund. The two million dollars we have in the public safety fund and
1.9 million dollars from the rural fire district. For impact fees we would be using 6.9
million dollars and we would have donations of 3.78 million dollars. So, if you look at
that from 2000 -- on the five year plan from '13 to '17, the cost is 26 million dollars. The
additional operating cost of 1.7 million dollars. If we look in our General Fund balance
at the end of '17, which, actually, that should probably be '22, would be down to 3.8
million dollars. So, obviously, our time frame is going to stretch considerably for this,
because we are not going to bring our General fund that low or below our reserve of 8.5
million dollars. But at least we have a road map. We have the projects that have been
-- that we want to do that are the priority projects that everybody has kind of struggled
and weeded and picked the ones they want to do over the near term, five, ten, 15 year
horizon. So, with that Todd will talk just a little bit about the current year budget. Are
there any questions?
De Weerd: No?
Kilchenmann: Not yet anyway.
8:30 - 9:00 -Overall Budget (TL), Nlerit (BN)
Lavoie: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, as Stacy stated I'm going to go over
the fiscal year 2013 budget that will be presented to you over the next two days. We
will start off with just a quick overview of a little housekeeping. I deposited a stack of
paper on each of your desks. The first item you will see is updated summary sheets.
We have one for the General Fund, one for the Enterprise Fund, and one for
Development Services or Community Development. Go ahead and just -- you can
replace the old one or just stack it on there. There are three enhancements we need to
talk about. I also included a new enhancement, City Hall number three. I included in
that stack of paperwork. It's for a front desk area. Again, that's in there, if you just add
that to the City Hall budget area. Also in the Public Works section, if you can delete the
enhancement number seven, that is the Lomar enhancement, that has been removed
from the budget and I have also included enhancement number five for Public Works,
which is a change. It went from 50,000 to 100,000. So, you should have all the
documents in front of you, if you can just insert those in your book I would appreciate it.
Those are the housekeeping items. So, let's go ahead and start off with the quick
discussion on the budget, as Stacy stated. This budget does have the three percent
property tax increase and also inside the budget documents you will see that we did
include a one percent merit pool. Bill Nary will discuss with you about the merit options
after I'm done here. In this budget also there is a proposal to request using two million
dollars of the General Fund fund balance for General Fund capital projects. So, with
that, the current position, what we are looking at, is the General Fund at this moment, if
we go with the proposal, would have, in addition to the fund balance of a little over
409,000 dollars and the Enterprise Fund will be requesting to use a little over 5.7 million
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
Page 5 of 95
of its fund balance to cover its capital projects. Again, these are the items that will be
presented to you over the next two days. I was going to quickly go over the -- what
you're going to be looking at numbers wise. The budget that will be presented to you is
going to be a little over 69 million dollars for the entire city. That is up 22 percent from
year over year. A majority of that is capital projects. As you can see the General Fund
is little over 31 million. The Community Development is a little over 2.4 million. And the
Enterprise Fund is sitting at about 35.6 million. This here is another picture of what the
budgets look like over the last six years. Starting from left is the fiscal year 2007 to
fiscal year 2013 on the right. Again, capital projects do influence the way this graph
looks tremendously. And, then, the bottom graph is the same data, just broken out in
the individual funds that we report to you, the General Fund, Development Services and
Enterprise Fund. So, I'm going to briefly talk about the individual funding groups that we
will be presenting to you over the next three days. You can see the General Fund is
going to be requesting a little over 31 million dollars and you can see how its broken
down by the individual departments, with the admin at 14, fire at 29, and so forth. The
Enterprise Fund, as we spoke of, is going to be requesting a little bit over 35.6 million
and you can see how that one is split up between the divisions in the Enterprise Fund.
And, then, the Community Development is a little over 2.4 million. So, those numbers
combined, again, that will get us back to the 69 million dollars that will be presented to
you over the next two days. So, within all the 69 million, 30 -- or sorry. Sixty-nine
percent of that is going to be the base budget. The base budget is what we propose to
you as the wages and the benefits and also the operating expenses it takes to operate
the city on a day-to-day basis. So, that's what we use as the total base. That does not
include any enhancements or replacements. Those are actually separated in the other
piece of the pie. Replacements represent a little over 948,000 dollars and, then, the
new enhancements that you will listen -- you will hear about over the next two days, 28
million, which is 30 percent of the budget. And within the discussions you will hear the
city will be requesting four new FFEs. One of them will be for the General Fund and
three of them will be for the Enterprise Fund and also for replacements there will be a
request for two new vehicles for the General Fund and nine replacement vehicles for
the General Fund. And, then, one replacement vehicle for the Enterprise Fund. This is
just -- the next few slides are going to be pictures of base budget. Again, the base
budget is the wages and benefits. So, this one here represents the General Fund
personnel which are wages and benefits from left to right for the last six years from
2007 to 2013. And, then, the second slide is the operating expenses, the daily
operating needs to run the city for the General Fund. The same two slides will be
presented for the Enterprise Fund and the Community Development. This one here is
the Enterprise Fund for, again, wages and benefits. Very very slight increase at all year
over year for the Enterprise Fund for wages and benefits. And, then, operating we have
been going down the last few years, they have been refining the way they look at things,
so it's a great picture here. And Community Development, base personnel still pretty
flat over year over year for the wages and benefits and as Stacy stated, operating
expenses really impacted by how we do with the building development, the expenses
that we paid to the inspectors. Just a quick little touch up on the replacements. Again,
you will be presented with 948,000 dollars in requests. The General Fund is asking for
a little over 717,000, Community Development a little for 4,000, and Enterprise Fund
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
Page 6 of 95
226,000 dollars. And you can see how the graph goes over the last six years again
from left to right. Enhancements again we spoke of a little over 20.8 million. You will be
listening to 74 enhancements total over the next two days. As you can see there the
dollars and the accounts per division and the graph below shows you where we have
been over the last six years for enhancement requests. There are a few departments
that are not on your schedule today to present, but they are always available to us. If
you have any questions feel free to let me know and I will go ahead and find a
representative from these departments to answer the questions, but they do not have a
scheduled slot on our presentation schedule. And with that I will leave with two comics
and stand for any questions that you have got -- you may have.
De Weerd: Any questions?
Lavoie: Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you. Good morning.
Nary: Good morning.
Zaremba: Good morning.
Nary: I just have a brief presentation, Mayor and Council, in regards to the proposed
increases for wages, as well as the benefits and we do have a strategic plan for
benefits. So, let's get right to it. For fiscal year'13 as we went through the budget with
all the senior leadership and the directors and the Mayor, we had taken the position
from the outset that we were not going to be proposing any increases to wages this year
until we had gotten through all the enhancements and evaluated all of the proposals
that each department had. Once we were able to do that we are available to
recommend a one percent across the board for all employee groups. That would
include the fire union, the police scale -- you may recall the police are paid on a different
-- a different measurement and a one percent for all general employee wages. The
directors felt that based on all the enhancements and all the different things that we still
could afford to do that and, then, keep employees whole in relation to benefits. Benefit
recommendations. What we are going to be asking -- we had a benefits committee
meeting last week -- for you to fund the benefits at the same FY-12 level. It's about 4.2
million dollars for benefits and, then, allow the senior management to craft some
modifications to our current plan design. We have some revisions in our medical and
dental. I will hand those out to you to take with you. But, basically, what we are going
to ask is to give us the opportunity to fashion that over the next couple of weeks. We
have to renew -- submit our renewal request by August and we would then -- we would
ask you to take the dedicated savings -- we believe, based some plan modifications that
we can make to plan design, that we can -- we can come into the number under that 4.2
million, but what we would like to ask you to do is to dedicate that savings to,
essentially, a medical savings line and that would help us strategically deal with future
potential increases to medical costs. All of you know that medical is -- medical costs
are increasing annually and with the changes to the national healthcare we are very
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
Page 7 of 95
concerned over the next few years how the city will be placed in relation to the market of
insurance. We believe that savings that we could generate out of some plan design, if
we can save that towards future increases, that will be of greater benefit to the city and
our employees and, secondarily, if we are able to save a significant amount we may be
able to come back to you in a few years with some other strategic options to use those
savings towards either benefits or, again, to deal with future potential increases. So,
just to give you some -- just to give you some numbers that we had gotten. The initial
offer for our medical Blue Cross was going to be a 2.56 percent increase. Very low in
this market. I don't know any other city that realized even that type of minimal increase
from Blue Cross this year. I meet with a number of HR managers around the state and
most of them have -- if they have a single digit increase it's certainly not below five.
Most don't have a single digit increase. But with the assistance of Mercer, our benefits
consultant, they actually came back at a 1.36 percent increase. But last year we
committed to you to come back with a different plan or a different strategy to address
our medical needs and not ask you to fund it beyond what you already had in FY-12.
So, with a couple of changes that we can consider -- and I'd like to have an opportunity
to bring that to our senior management team, we could change our deductibles. We
currently have a 250 to 500 dollar deductible for employees -- 250 individual, 500 for
family. With some changes to that deductible we can actually realize a 1.7 percent
decrease in our medical costs. If we were to either change our co-insurance the
additional costs you may get. if you go to an appointment and you have to go get an
x-ray or an MRI or something else, we currently pay apercent -- each employee pays a
percentage of that cost. By slightly changing that we could be realizing up to a 4.5
percent increase. The numbers here can be somewhere between a 60,000 dollar
savings up to about 160,000 dollar savings. But I'd like some time to discuss that with
the senior leadership, just because I know it impacts employees greatly in lots of ways.
What we are not looking to do is impact employees negatively in the sense that they still
wouldn't have any additional out-of-pocket expenses and it's greater today -- in a way
that they can stave off and deal with some of those changes that we can provide
employees and still make it seem like it's not a significant impact. It wouldn't change
our co-pay. It wouldn't change the -- it wouldn't change the cost for prescriptions and
the like.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Just to throw one thing into the mix. When you're discussing options and
possibilities with the senior management team -- VRT uses -- Valley Regional Transit
uses a system where they subsidize the deductible. In other words, what they pay to
the insurance company is less and the deductibles are higher, which theoretically
means the employee pays a higher deductible or office visit cost. But apparently Valley
Regional Transit finds it cheaper to subsidize that deductible directly to the employee,
as opposed to paying it to the insurance company and I just throw that into the mix for
discussion of having a higher deductible but subsidizing that separate from the
insurance. I don't know if that makes sense, but --
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
Page 8 of 95
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Zaremba, that makes
perfect sense and those are things in plan design that we'd like to get to. The reason
we believe that that -- trying to capture that savings and bank that savings will give us
that level of flexibility in plan design for the long term to give us those dollars to be able
to incentivize employees, to maybe move to plans that are going to be more beneficial
to them and the city, but provide some cushion for those kinds of things. So, that is the
purpose of that type of savings is to give us that ability. We looked at a partial self-
funding model for this year and, one, it's a pretty complex process to go through to do it,
but, secondarily -- I mean there is always a financial risk or a potential risk with partial
self funding. We looked at it over a ten year period and if we would have done it ten
years ago we would have actually lost money for about seven of those ten years. But if
we would have done it over the last five years we would have actually made money for
three of those five. So, it really is trying to build some longer term strategies. You
know, for the longest time we as a city simply just took the increases and negotiated
them down and tried as best we could to absorb it into the budget. We know long term
that's not a -- that's not a sound way to do things, that we are going to -- we are going
to, essentially, grow our base even greater by simply doing that. So, giving us some
flexibility will allow us some plan design changes such as you suggest. Delta Dental our
initial offer is a nine percent increase with the current plan that we have. That was a
significant amount of money. There is a couple of different options. One has a four
percent increase and the other has a zero. We'd like to explore the zero as a potential
way again to capture some savings in budgeted dollars, so that we can absorb some of
these costs, so that the -- the city would realize the benefit, as well as ultimately we can
use that for, again, a future benefit for the budget, as well as for the employees. Our
other additional benefits realized asmall -- very small increase. A thousand dollar --
1,080 was the annual increase to our EUP program. We have a very high utilization,
which is good. Sometimes people think using a lot of EUP is bad, but the reality is is
people are addressing their needs and problems and concerns prior to it becoming a
problem greater than they can deal with. So, our utilization is actually about 26 percent
and that's a huge number in comparison to most other businesses and we are really
actually glad to have that program. Our vision program at VSP realizes an 800 dollar
increase in this year. We think, again, we can capture those 1,800 dollars with some
plan designs to the more expensive sections and suggest the medical, that we can
absorb those and there is no increase to the other benefits that are provided. Anyway,
we would like you to consider that request and to fund it at the FY-12 level and give a
little opportunity to look at some plan design before it goes back to you within the month
and, then, move those forward. So, any other questions?
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: One more and this is an explanation of something that I probably should
have understood years ago and still trying to wrap my head around that that is is the
police department's step plan. My understanding of it is that that has built in increases
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
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to it. That's what the steps are. In saying that we are proposing across the board one
percent increase for all employees and you list the police department among them,
does that mean that we are taking the step plan and boosting it up by one percent,
which already has increases built into it?
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Zaremba, that is
correct. So, the one percent would be to the plan itself. So, if you're currently at a
certain level -- that would be a one percent increase -- if you recall there are certain
levels that they don't get any additional increase. So, between year five and year ten for
the average officer, unless they were to be promoted or unless they were to receive
another certification through POST for a new level, they don't get any other increase
other than that one percent. Once they reach year ten one of the increases they get a
stipend in relation to years of service. They will be getting a small increase to their
years of service -- for their hourly rate based on years of service, but they don't get any
other promotional -- or any other additional increases, other than being promoted. And,
again, after year ten, unless they get another -- again, a certification through POST --
there is four levels I believe, chief, of certifications at POST? Basic, advanced --
Lavey: Yeah.
Nary: Executive.
Lavey: Advanced and masters.
Nary: And masters. So, unless they move up that way that's the only increase they
would get is the one percent.
Zaremba: Okay. I think I'm understanding that. Just kind of a sideways question. I
know we felt for some time that we may have been below market I guess you call it with
other agencies around us. Now that we have gotten to full complement does the step
plan make us fairly close to market, so that other agencies are not raiding us?
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Zaremba, we do
believe it is a marketable plan and we do believe that we currently are in market with the
other agencies. I mean the economic downturn that all cities have felt, you know, over
the last few years I think has sort of leveled the market out. You know, our long term
strategy, obviously, is we have to stay ahead of that. We have a number of tools. One
of the things we are going to be looking at in FY-13 for HR is looking at general
employee wages and seeing how that can be structured so, again, to deal with a long
term strategy and not just a -- a quick fix. You know, we sometimes seem to --
departments sometimes think, you know, we need to adjust certain positions and
sometimes we do based on the market for hiring for a certain job or a level of job. We
want to look at a longer term strategy to bring to you next year to fund our general
employees' wages similar to a CIP, if you will, a similar sort of strategic long term plan.
We -- obviously we are always going to be looking at the police at the same time to
make sure we are staying within the market locally and, again, if the economy improves
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
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we have to stay in front of that, otherwise we will experience the same things we did a
few years ago.
Zaremba: Thank you.
De Weerd: Any other questions?
Nary: Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you, Bill.
9:00 - 9:00 - No Enhancements - wilding, City Clerk, Econ, ®ev. Finance
9:00 - 9:10 -Planning
Chatterton: Madam Mayor, Council Members. Community Development -- that is
planning division, therefore, Community Development's requested enhancement for this
coming year is for the fields district, 30,000 dollars. I think most of you are familiar with
the intent behind the fields district planning effort. In a nutshell it involves looking at
opportunities for agri business and bio science and a portion of the city possibly on
some donated land, but we are also talking about a larger area .than the possible
donation would cover. Looking at research and development for this proposed district,
in addition to complimentary businesses that -- and institutions that may want to locate.
A big emphasis on identifying a research component in order to make this work. We
are very excited about the project. It's a different kind of project than we have done
before in that we see this as being a lead for a market component. When I say market
I'm not talking about the sort of market study that has a really really short shelf life and
the number change and it's done, we are talking about working with a consultant to
engage stakeholders. So, this would be agri and bio science businesses in the
northwest and also perhaps those that we might be able to track from outside our
region. Speaking with them. Looking at opportunities. So, the first phase we would
envision for this project would be what I call a market action plan. We do enough work
on the market conditions and working with stakeholders in order to be -- to identify uses
and, hopefully, actual users in the fields district and only then would we move to a
phase two where we would start looking at land use and infrastructure planning to
support those uses. It's a little bit different sort of animal than we usually do. I believe
that if we approach this strictly from a land use planning standpoint, infrastructure
planning standpoint, that it probably won't be a successful project. If we do lead,
though, with identifying who and what we want to have in the area and, then, plan
around that, Ithink -- I think it will be successful. So, the 30,000 dollar enhancement we
would, then, be adding part of Planning's base budget for professional services, which is
20,000 dollars. We believe that we can take some money from professional services
and the economic development budget as well and as you all know economic
development is now part of Community Development. And, then, we will also be
requesting a 15,000 dollar carryover for monies that were identified for this project
previously. We believe that we can deliver this project for under 80,000 dollars. It has
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
Page 11 of 95
to be right, though, and the enhancement would be one piece of making that happen.
So, happy to answer any questions about this.
De Weerd: Any questions from Council at this point?
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Not really a question. It's a statement in support. This isn't exactly the same
as the core. It has some different elements to it. But my recollection is the city invested
in getting the core going and it had been returning benefits that I think certainly make it
worth it and in some respects this is a similar thrust -- different project, but a similar
thrust and I would support getting it kicked off.
De Weerd: Thank you, Council. I guess I would point us back to the survey that we
have done -- we did two years ago or a year and a half and the community has really
wanted us to focus on job creation and certainly we have had job creation, but it's
primarily, as Stacy pointed out, been in the retail sector, the service sector, that are not
the family wage jobs and so the fields district is a real serious focus in the family wage
jobs and getting those primary employers that -- that, in turn, generate additional job
multipliers. I guess it has a job multiplier to it. So, I think there has been positive
progress made in terms of redefining the white paper that was written a couple years
ago in trying to drill down to make it into a realistic focus and Brenda has been out and
been at some of the bio conferences that have helped redefine it and really give context
to putting together a plan to start eating the elephant, so to speak. Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, Bruce, real quick. The enhancement request is for 30,000
and you talked about economic development be contributing some, but the total cost
would be 80,000?
Chatterton: Yes.
Hoaglun: And can you run through -- I missed that part. The additional was --
Chatterton: And I apologize, Council Member. Let me run through that. We have the
30,000 dollar enhancement being requested now. We have 20,000 dollars in planning's
base budget for professional services. We have 15,000, which is a good chunk of
economic development's base budget for professional services and, then, we would be
hoping to get 15,000 dollars previously identified for this project to carry over. As the
Mayor mentioned, it has taken some time to really get the focus to where we can launch
this properly.
Hoaglun: Okay. Got it. Thank you, Bruce.
Rountree: Madam Mayor, I support this -- if you look at the previous budget actually
reflects a 75,000 dollar reduction in professional services. Moving this back in there is
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
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still a net reduction in the budget and I think they could have just as easily said let's
carry over last year's professional services budget and put this in there and we wouldn't
have known the difference and I think this is really an open way to do it.
De Weerd: I would just add to it that this is -- this is, actually, a unique approach and
appreciate Planning and Economic Development in coming forward and looking at it in a
different way than most. They are trying to understand the market realities and what
that market demands before they start looking at the land use. So, I'm really excited
about the approach on this and think it's -- it's the right approach and it still is
conservative and cautious, but it's looking at the market and, then, working with the
different stakeholders and seeing how we can work it. Anything further from for Brad --
for Brad. For Bruce. For what's his name.
Rountree: The new guy.
De Weerd: Yeah. Who are you? Thank you, Bruce.
Chatterton: Thank you.
De Weerd: I guess we have streetlights up next or -- I saw Peter get up, so I wasn't
sure if he was going to come chime in as well. Now, Bruce, I hope you take example
that there is a PowerPoint as part of this next presentation.
Chatterton: I will.
De Weerd: For next year. Visuals always help.
9:10 m 9:25 -Streetlights
Curns: I don't have any dashboards or anything like that.
De Weerd: Oh, shoot.
Curns: Or chart. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I have three streetlight
enhancements to propose. This first one is a 50,000 dollar enhancement for new
streetlight installation. This is really a continuation of what is being done this year. It
was approved last year -- last year for this fiscal year and we are still continuing on that
goal of improving safety along Linder Road, the project this year that is under
construction as we speak, is installing lighting between the railroad tracks and Cherry
Lane on Linder Road and kind of in conjunction with all the widening that's going on out
there and, then, this is an extension of that going further north to kind of catch that last
half mile of kids traveling to Meridian High School and Meridian Middle School. It's
really just aimed at enhancing pedestrian safety, cyclist safety, motorist safety and also
encouraging alternative transportation, you know, make it easier for folks to walk and
bike and not be doing so in the pitch dark. So, that is the first enhancement. Any
questions on that one? Otherwise, I will move onto the next one.
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July 10, 2012
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De Weerd: Go ahead.
Curns: The next one is enhancement number two for 7 ,000 dollars for purchase of new
LED fixtures. This enhancement is kind of continuing what was done with the energy
efficiency grant last year where we replaced all of the streetlights on the Main and
Meridian corridor -- the existing ones with LED fixtures and with ACHD's split corridor
project they will install some new streetlights at the intersections only along Meridian
Road and so this is really just an option. If there is desire to make that all -- all as one
so that it matches and to realize some of the savings from reduced energy
consumption, reduced maintenance. We actually ended up with a few extra fixtures
from the energy efficiency grant project, because we were about to put them up and,
then, we realized that some of those poles are going to get moved around for the split
corridor project, so we just held onto them and so this basically purchases the next
handful of fixtures so that we can stick them all up and take care of the rest of Meridian
Road. So, that's the idea there.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: And maybe it's too soon to tell, but do we notice any savings from the LED
fixtures that have been installed?
Curns: They -- definitely there is a cost savings -- I think I wrote it on a little post-it here
just in case somebody asked. It generally works out to be -- I just did it in a packet.
This enhancement is for eight fixtures and so it ends up in aggregate being about 615
dollars for just eight fixtures that we save a year in maintenance and electricity. So, we
actually put all those up and, then, went to Idaho Power and had them change all the
rate schedules that go with the lights. There they are nonmetered, so it's not like we
can actually see on the bill how many less kilowatts we are using, but we have
calculated that out. So, it's definitely a savings.
Zaremba: Great. Thanks.
De Weerd: Okay.
Curns: And, then, enhancement number three. For that I'm going to invite up Ashley
Ford from Meridian Development Corporation. This enhancement is for 175,000
dollars. This is for new decorative street lighting and the idea behind this is to enhance
pedestrian safety along the east side of Meridian Road by installing new decorative
streetlight poles and fixtures. The amount of this enhancement is actually a portion of a
total larger project and this request to kind of share the cost of that by the Meridian
Development Corporation. These lights are the same ones that we have outside City
Hall and that anyone would be required to install in the downtown core through the
development process. So, I guess with that Iwill -- I'm kind of here for some additional
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
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technical support on this one as well and, then, Ashley maybe give a little bit of
background as what the project is.
De Weerd: And, Tim, maybe you can also talk to how you worked with MDC in trying to
minimize the number of these lighting structures and minimize the cost overall.
Curns: Absolutely, Madam Mayor. The original project -- I'm trying to remember how
many lights it was. I want to say it was 60 or 70 lights. What we tried to do is I worked
with Meridian Development Corporation and their consultant to try and minimize the
number of light poles that would be needed to accomplish this project and we actually
did some --Iran some photometric tests trying to figure out how we could not -- you
know, maximize spacing, where we could eliminate poles because ACRD is installing
lighting at the intersections and so we don't need, you know, redundant lighting there
and we really -- really tried to stretch it as far as we could and still meet, you know,
minimum safety lighting levels for the sidewalk area -- sidewalk bicycling area.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Hoaglun: And, Madam Mayor, as Ashley comes up just a quick question, Tim. ACHD
does the intersections still and they are using still the pole type because of the reach
and --
Curns: Correct.
Hoaglun: Okay.
Ford: Thank you, Tim. Good morning. Ashley Ford. MDC. Tim stole some of my
thunder. We have looked at a number of items, including value engineering, as Tim
spoke about, and, you know, maximizing the spacing. We have also looked at phasing,
as well, too, in trying to be as cost efficient with this project as possible, but also looking
at the reality of our budget. Our budget -- I'm not sure if some of you are familiar, but
our budget range is usually around 920 to 970 thousand dollars on an annual basis and
this year it's probably going to come in 950,000 dollars. So, a 436,000 dollar street
lighting project is fairly significant for us. When those numbers came in in March we
were struggling to figure out where those dollars would come from and how we were
going to do this and we weren't clear when the money was going to be due at that point
in time as well and so, hence, the board, voted unanimously in April to make this
request to the Council. I'm not sure if you still have a copy of that letter that I submitted
explaining the request, but generally it is a partnership request up to 50 percent. We
understand if that's something that you cannot do in terms of 50 percent match. Any
little bit would help us. We are able to cover the cost completely, but certainly if there is
not an equal partnership we would certainly be happy to entertain that. Be happy to
entertain any questions you may have of us.
De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
Page 15 of 95
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Tim, would you outline these two enhancements that -- the one with -- for the
7,000 dollars, the additional eight streetlights combined to 16, where would those be
and how do they relate to this request and what happens on the west side of Meridian
Road?
Curns: Absolutely. In fact, Todd, there is one more slide in there. I'm just hoping that
this is viewable on your screen there. This is a map that just shows what area we are
talking about and if you can make out the little colored dots on there, the blue line is the
extent of where that -- this third enhancement, the decorative lighting, what that would
cover through the cross-over area and down the east side of Meridian Road. It's
roughly a pole every of 90 feet. Then the yellow light there are the ones that ACHD is
going to be installing at the intersections and those are the ones which they would
normally show up a 250 watt high pressure sodium fixture and so what we are saying is
we will put a -- well, the 250 watt fixture actually uses 300 watts. We are saying we are
going to stick up 180 watt LED fixture on those poles and as you can see there is more
than eight dots on there and so that's -- as I was saying, we have some of the remaining
fixtures from the energy efficiency grant project to cover those. And, then, the red dots
are actually lights that a lot of -- most of them we have out there already they are down
the west side of Meridian Road and those are mounted on the power poles. They are
actually owned by Idaho Power and, then, we reimburse them for those on a monthly
basis. So, the decorative lighting just goes down the east side sidewalk in the --
basically along the edge of the downtown core and, then, the intersections are lit by the
ACRD lights and, then, we have some additional supplemental lighting from Idaho
Power along the west sides of the road sidewalk area. I wish I had a little bit better
graphic.
Rountree: Follow up. Remind me on the requirement for the decorative lighting and
benches and receptacles and stuff in the redevelopment area. Is that city ordinance or
is that a requirement of MDC?
Bird: That's actually a -- there are standards that MDC has for the downtown area that
were created -- I want to say 2006 -- 2007? That calls out the benches and the lighting
and tree grates and all that kind of stuff. So, that's exactly where it comes from.
De Weerd: However, I think that in the standards that you have been working hard to
create, this is combined with standards that have been set by the city, as first evidence I
think in -- along Overland Road with South Ridge and some of the lights that we
required the developer to put in there. We don't have a developer here and so some of
these are new standards that have been set by the city as well.
Bird: Madam Mayor. Correct. So, MDC has those standards and for us to kind of be
able to -- be the enforcement mechanism for them for development for lighting, we
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
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rolled that deck -- their decorative lighting requirement into our standards, so we have a
way to actually require it when a development comes in.
Rountree: And one final question. What's -- what's the difference between the
decorative lighting and just standard lights fixture, maybe the LED fixtures in cost?
Curns: Are you saying for -- for the decorative post you want to do something other
than what the --did you want to put an LED fixture in it?
Rountree: Well, just a regular streetlight LED fixture. Nondecorative versus the
decorative.
Curns: Versus the decorative? The decorative -- I wish I had a little breakdown of this.
The decorative poles are about -- for a pole foundation and light fixture they are about
5,500 dollars and those fixtures are actually induction fixtures, which are 85 watts, as
opposed to what we used to use which is 150 watts high pressure sodium and, then, the
LED -- you can't -- you can't actually get this fixture for the decorative pole in an LED, so
that's why we go with the induction ones, but the induction fixtures that we can stick up
on the -- like the ACHD poles, the big mast arm ones, those are 180 watts and
approximately six to seven hundred dollars a fixture. I had a breakdown of that whole
decorative pole cost. It didn't include the pole and the foundation. That how we got the
estimates for this -- as a way to compare what just a fixture on the decorative pole costs
compared to the LED fixture.
De Weerd: And I thought ACRD -- or MDC did put some cost to just stubbing it and,
you know, that was a significant cost as well. So, maybe it's even -- if, Ashley, you
could share what that cost was.
Ford: I can't remember exactly what that cost was, Mayor, and I apologize for that. I do
know that we did look at it from a savings standpoint in order to reduce the cost over
time and just for remobilization for each phase which ended up the 30 to 40 thousand
dollar range. So, to us it made sense to do all this in one phase. Also from an esthetic
point of view as well, too, to keep that look consistent. We thought it was fairly
important for this project, because the rest of the project was going to be finished, so we
felt like the lighting should be as well. We can certainly get those cost breakdowns to
you very easily. I apologize we don't have that.
De Weerd: Tim, I guess do you have a cost of what a lighting fixture -- just a general
standard lighting fixture would be?
Curns: Madam Mayor, the decorative type?
De Weerd: No. Just like what we have -- what we would -- what we would require of a
road corridor that we want lit.
Curns: About 250 dollars.
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
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De Weerd: Two hundred and fifty dollars for the pole?
Curns: Just for the fixture. The poles tend to be installed about another two to 2, 500
dollars or -- yeah. Two thousand, twenty-five hundred. You're talking about 3,000
dollars a pole for one of those cobra head mast arm ones that you see going up on an
arterial roadway and, then, the shoe box ones in a neighborhood are maybe 2,000
dollars installed apiece.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: So, the 50,000 in our first enhancement you said would fund seven poles or
areas.
Curns: The second enhancement is seven fixtures for the LED. The first one for
50,000 that generally funded about 13 poles and fixtures and, you know, all the stuff
that comes with it.
De Weerd: Okay.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yeah. Mr. Bird.
Bird: Tim, on the West 8th Street pole, what -- those -- those ran quite a bit more than
2,000 dollars a pole, light and everything, didn't they?
Curns: Councilman Bird, I believe the poles were just over a thousand dollars apiece
and the fixtures were somewhere in the 800 dollars apiece --
Bird: Eighteen hundred.
Curns: Yeah. And, then, of course, the cost for the foundation and all the stuff that
goes with it was probably about another 13 or 15 hundred dollars per -- per pole.
De Weerd: Any other questions from Council?
Rountree: I have none. Thank you. Thanks, Tim.
Curns: Uh-huh.
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba?
Zaremba: If I'm understanding the numbers that we are adding up, the end answer is
that the decorative poles and lamps and stuff aren't much more expensive than just a
standard nondecorative one.
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
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Rountree: Yeah.
Curns: That's correct.
Zaremba: And, actually, it sounded like it's even cheaper.
De Weerd: I don't know if it's cheaper, but --
Rountree: About double.
Zaremba: It's not abig -- it's not a big expense anyhow.
Curns: You pay for decorative.
De Weerd: That's -- you just pay saying decorative.
Zaremba: Anyhow -- yeah.
De Weerd: Thank you, Tim.
Curns: Thanks.
9:25 - 9:55 - FiR, Legal
De Weerd: Okay. I see HR and Legal up and, then, we will take a break.
Nary: Hello again.
De Weerd: Are you speechless?
Nary: No. I'm just waiting for the --
De Weerd: Oh, shoot.
Bird: I was going to say, that's a first.
Nary: Thank you. All right. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, thank you for this
opportunity to present our enhancements for FY-13. We don't have very many, so it
shouldn't take very long. This is our organizational chart. As you know we have made
some changes in the last year in our IT section and we found that's worked quite well.
Some of our folks from our department are in the room today and I always like this
opportunity to get in front of you to tell you what a great job we are doing and what a
great job we do with the people that we have. We have a great team and our very
diverse department that we have and we take a great deal of pride in providing the
services that we do to our customers, which is our employees, which is the base -- our
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
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base function is to provide the services internally though IT, through HR and through
our legal staff to the different departments, the different directors, the different
employees. You all every Tuesday night, every day, and the folks that are part of our
team make that all happen and I'm very lucky to be the director of that department and I
appreciate all the work that all of them do and I just wanted to take a moment to
recognize all of them, because I don't think we could be more efficient or more team
oriented and goal oriented to accomplish what we need to do for the city and we have
such a great group of people, I just wanted to take that moment to tell you that. So, for
FY-13 we have, basically, three enhancements. One of the services we provide is we
provide support to the various commissions. Some of our commissions actually have
city staff on them, some of our commissions we just provide either legal support or the
clerk's office provides clerk support. One of the -- one of the commissions that we
provide support to is the historic preservation commission. For the last couple of years
you have funded an intern position for them. They are currently in the midst of creating
a large computer database of records. Mostly records as you would imagine from the
early 1900s up until really probably in the last 20 years at most were all handwritten.
So, they have a lot of city minutes that were put together. You recall probably when Lila
Hill was honored by you a few weeks ago, she brought you a project that had been
worked on for about a year in taking all the city minutes from the early 1900s to the '30s
and putting them into a database and she brought you a book that was done by the
intern. The intern position has also done some photographic work. Now the intern
position is working on the Occidental club minutes. There is lots of handwritten
minutes, very difficult to decipher and they don't have any other volunteer assistants to
provide them this support to get these minutes put together and, again, to keep all of
these paper records. As they get older and older they fade, they are harder to read,
they are harder to decipher, and so they have asked for either continue to fund that
position -- this is basically fund the position of about a hundred dollars a month for the
time to get this work done. So, that's what that first enhancement is. Our second
enhancement is for iPads. We found the technology it advances and we are a very
mobile group of people, we aren't sitting at hour desks all day as you can imagine. We
found that it would be helpful and beneficial to that efficiency to have the ability to be
connected both to your -- your e-mail, your ability to use documents to go to meetings.
You folks have probably seen the value of the iPad and for a fairly small cost for
essentially four for our department we think it would be much more efficient and allow
us that level of mobility and also access to information that we find sometimes in
meetings it's just the ability to access either the Idaho Code, the City Code, or
something else is invaluable to getting work done. The last is a program that we are
probably most proud of in HR. Over the last two years is our youth work life skills
program. I don't know this for a fact, but I can imagine -- I don't think any other entity in
this town hires more teenagers to work for them, except for possibly Roaring Springs
and Wahooz, than the City of Meridian and I think that's a great thing for our community.
We have provided, again, this year 21 -- 21 positions for high school students. We'd
like to make that a permanent program now. We gave an enhancement earlier this
summer to get that going. We'd like to make it a permanent program. We think it's an
effective tool to get our youth in our community engaged in the city, engaged in the
workforce. We provide them not just a job, but we give them a whole life experience.
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
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We have them interviewed. They fill out an application. They come to work in a
professional environment and we have found it to be both an enhancement for the
students and an enhancement for the parents and an enhancement for our department.
There is a lot of work that these kids get done for us that are important and necessary
and they just don't always -- can always get accomplished in the course of a day, the
course of week or a month. But these students have been a valuable tool for us and I
think we provided them a valuable life experience, so we would like to make that a
permanent program going forward. Our prosecution and police services contract -- this
is going to be our 12th year with the city of Boise. I spoke with the city attorney Kerry
Colaiani last night and he tells me the same thing that he says to you, he loves this
contract. He thinks it works well for them. It's works well for our police. It works well for
our prosecution needs and this year they only needed an additional two percent
increase based on their budgetary needs for the city of Boise. So, we'd like to continue
with that contract. We think it's a valuable asset for the city and to our police
department and Mr. Colaiani said he did want to take you to lunch sometime, too,
Mayor. He just wanted me to pass that on. So --
De Weerd: Will that be included in the two percent?
Nary: He would pay. He would pay.
De Weerd: Oh. Okay. Bill, I think it is also important to note the increase in the
number of cases that they are handling, too. It's much greater than the two percent
increase that they are asking for in this. Is that not correct?
Nary: Absolutely, Madam Mayor. When we started we were probably around --
estimates kind of vary a little bit, depending on who is giving us the numbers, but
somewhere between nine and ten percent of the caseload in Ada County ten years ago,
sometimes maybe as low as seven percent were City of Meridian cases. Now we are
closer to the 12 to 13 percent. So, we have grown significantly both in the number of
officers in the last 12 years, as well as the service they provide. I mean they have two
attorneys that are assigned to our department for two days a week. One of them, Terry
Derden you have had in front of you a number of times. Terry has become a very
valuable resource and our department uses him quite often, not just at the chief's level,
but at the patrol officer level and that particular level of service and response we get
from them from the training, as well as the daily service -- or the weekly service in the
facility, they handle all of the public records requests that go through the police
department for us. So, we get a great deal of service for the value of this contract and
so we would like to keep it going. That's all I have.
De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
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Hoaglun: Bill, on the youth work life skills deal, where we did the pilot, that was a three
month deal. This is going to four months? Through September? Are we just in one for
15 to 22 thousand -- are we hiring more kids or just the extra month is added -- added to
that?
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Hoaglun. It's really just
the additional month. What we found in parceling it out that it ends up being about a
5,000 dollar a month program for around that 15 to 20 kids. We tried to balance the
hours. They only are allowed to work a maximum of 32 hours in a week. Many of them
don't work that many hours, because we try to be very flexible. Probably the one thing
that we provide to the youth that a lot of other employers can't, because we have a good
size pool of kids every one of them practically has a family vacation, a church camp, a
football camp, a volleyball camp or something that they had other commits to. We work
around that schedule and so -- but overall when we parcel it out and run the numbers it
runs about 5,000 dollars a month, so that's what the 20,000 was for.
Hoaglun: Thank you.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Everything that I have heard that this program has been very successful and
well received. Are we thinking on an ongoing basis in analyzing where these students
are actually used that at some point that would be transferred into the different
department budgets, as opposed to being a HR budget? I understand while it's a pilot
program it makes sense to keep it in one place, but is that something that eventually is
going to become permanent enough that it's department controlled?
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Zaremba, we haven't
really explored that. You know, right now because our department manages all of the
hiring and all of the scheduling for this type of program. What you're talking about we
currently have that ability. I mean every department can certainly request an intern or
an intern-type position that they want to do. But we had them discuss whether or not
the transition is to something more of that traditional intern program. We really wanted
this to be something different. So, that's why we have kept it as part of an HR program
to this point.
Zaremba: Okay. And just one other question about how it operates. Once they are
hired do they pretty much stay in the same position or are they bounced around.
Nary: It depends, Council Member Zaremba.
De Weerd: We don't call it bounced, by the way.
Zaremba: Are they shuffled? I don't know what the lingo is.
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
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Nary: It depends a little on the department's needs, as well as the student's needs.
Some students like a variety of different things and we try to give them, if we can, that
kind of experience. So, some like to work only inside, some like to work on the outside
and some don't care. Some would be happy to do both. So, we get all the different
needs from the departments on whether they are office needs or outside needs. We
have them paint a lot of fire hydrants in the summer, for example, for the water
department. Some departments don't want to have too many, because, then, you have
to train or to have too much transition and so we try to meet need as much as we can,
to not have a large turnover. Some departments, depending on their work needs, it isn't
that significant to them, so if we have one student for two weeks and a different student
for two different -- two other weeks, that department doesn't care. So, we really try to
meet both the students' needs and what they would like to do in giving them that
experience, but we also try to make sure we don't interfere with the operations of the
department, so we make sure we -- if they don't want a large turnover, then, we try to
satisfy that as much as we can.
Zaremba: Okay. Thank you.
De Weerd: And, Councilman Zaremba, the beauty of this program really is in the
flexibility in getting them exposed to different aspects of city government and getting
them -- I guess that experience in doing different types of work. I had the privilege as I
was waiting at the sewer treatment plant to talk to one of the interns there, who is
working on helping them organize their maps, is now looking at another project, but they
have also worked with him to expose him to not just the day to day things, but also in
what is the wastewater treatment plant and what makes it unique and trying to expose
him to -- to get him excited about maybe a future career. So, it's a really unique
program that challenges them, gives them live skills, but also exposes them to what a
local and Public -- Public Work is. It's -- it's very -- I think it's from what I have talked to
the different students, I have met, they look forward to it and they are very proud to be
part of it.
Hoaglun: And, Madam Mayor, though, the reason this whole program was created was
based on the fact that the economy was slowing, the jobs that kids traditionally had out
there were being replaced by adults who were taking anything available and it was a
good opportunity to do just exactly that, expose them to the public side of business,
government work and get some experience, at the same time provide some functions
for the city at a fairly low cost. You know, down the road if we reach that full
employment point again, if ever, and we are having to raise our rates, because there is
competition out there and they are paying 15 dollars an hour at a fast food deal, we may
have to reevaluate that at that time. I mean do we want to --
De Weerd: Fifteen dollars an hour in fast food?
Hoaglun: Well, that was a few years ago. Yeah. Yeah. You know. And that's always
a balance that we do. Are we, then, competing with the private sector for available
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
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pools of young people and that may change and that would be a nice problem to have,
actually, you know, but we aren't there yet, so --
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Bill, I'm sure we have seen some -- by comparison in the legal budget some
significant increases, budget amendments, for legal fees. And I don't see that
anticipated in your base budget. Do you think it's actually going to go down this year
or --
Nary: I wish I could say absolutely. You know, when I first got here we had a fairly
large outside legal expense budget and we carved it down to a reasonable amount and
we kept it as a reasonable amount for a couple years, because we can handle the
majority of the legal issues that come up internally. Losses are the whole ball of wax
that is -- as all of you know are very difficult to manage internally sometimes, it's very
very difficult to deal with outside counsel. We have looked at alternative coverage to
even see if we can get coverage and the reality is is that with the current insurance type
of model that we use there are certain types of claims that we are going to get against
the city that aren't covered by that. We have tried to find other alternatives and the
reality is that it just doesn't exist. So, I don't know annually. My hope -- my hope and
belief all of this we are going to stay within that outside legal expense budget, because
we are not going to really need much outside expenses. You know, some of the
pending suits that we have out there are -- in my opinion frivolous and do cost the city
some money to defend and deal with and I don't have a better answer than trying to
curb the cost, watch how the outside counsel is reusing them. We try to evaluate each
time we get something on whether or not it's something we should and could handle
internally and still maintain the level of service to the other departments that we need to.
And I think right now we are down four and I'm hopeful that we won't have any.
Rountree: Thank you.
De Weerd: Okay. Any further questions for Bill?
Nary: Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you. Okay. At this point we do have scheduled a break. Is that --
Stacy?
Kilchenmann: I think that would be probably a good idea. I'm also going to hand out --
I'll put on your places the calculation of the levy -- actually the rate with and without
three percent and compared to last year, so you actually have the number in its entirety.
Remember, this is a draft, because we don't have the final numbers from Ada County
yet, but just for you to consider over the next two days. And, then, if anybody needs a
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July 10, 2012
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copy of the CIP plan we sent, we have copies of that here if you didn't happen to bring
your copy. So, I think we scheduled ten minutes, Todd? Ten minutes.
De Weerd: Okay.
(Recess: 9:22 a.m. to 9:38 a.m.)
10:05-10:25-City Hall
De Weerd: Well, I'll go ahead and bring this meeting back to order and it looks like John
is up. Welcome. No displays? Where is your cart?
McCormick: I have no part cart and I have no slides. So, I'm standing up almost
natural.
De Weerd: That's a frightening thought.
McCormick: Good morning, Mayor and Council Members. I'm representing an
enhancement for the City Hall building that relates to security and it's putting additional
cameras on the building -- particularly the west side of the building, which currently is
exposed, it has no surveillance or security capability on that building now. And, I
apologize, I assume that you have this enhancement in your book.
De Weerd: Yes.
McCormick: Okay. The enhance for is 14,000 dollars, one time charge, that covers the
cost of purchasing the hardware that's necessary, including the insulation material and
the mounting brackets and the cabling, as well as the cameras themselves. There is
five of them. And, then, the licensing for those cameras. The ongoing support
associated would be provided by our IT group, so there is no ongoing cost involved that
would require us to put in an enhancement for that. And this is the -- I think an essential
addition to our building. We have had a good deal of activity and I can't say specifically
in terms of number of volume and cases of -- where we could have potential threats, but
we certainly have had in this last year two major events between Broadway and Pine
that involves that side of the building and we have had other suspicious packages left
there that we had to call the police department in on. So, this would be just to round out
the security -- exterior security for the building and I will stand for any questions at this
time.
De Weerd: Thank you, John. Any questions from Council?
Rountree: I have none.
De Weerd: Thank you.
McCormick: Thank you.
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Rountree: I guess I do. That will complete the City Hall complex?
McCormick: Yes. And all sides of the building will have cameras and it will be
consistent with the cameras that we are currently operating.
Rountree: Very good. Thank you.
McCormick: Okay.
De Weerd: Was there a second City Hall enhancement that was added? Did you want
to do that now? Did you want to talk to the generator?
McCormick: Yes, I would like to talk to that.
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you.
McCormick: Thank you for the reminder to. Currently we have backup capabilities to
specific areas within this building and this is power capability. We do not have backup
power to every aspect of the building. So, for example, workstations are not backed up.
Individuals working at their desk would not be able to access their workstation in a
period of emergency or vital critical time we would not have potentially that support. We
don't have the lights throughout the building that would be required for emergency
lighting. So, what we are proposing, then, is to extend the backup capability to the rest
of the building and that would involve extending out the power capability through the
wiring, as well as two additional transformers, one at the north end and one at the south
end, To enable that expansion. That would give us full emergency capability, so that we
could respond from any particular area in the building, north-south, and, then, in the
middle. That enhancement is for 170,000 dollars. We are in the process of designing
that work, so it could be well below that figure, but I wanted to get that in front of you
today, so that you know the urgency of getting that done and, then, that would put us
into a very good position with the emergency management capability and this is
something that has been requested through the emergency management committee as
well.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: You say two transformers or do you mean generators?
McCormick: Transformers.
Bird: Transformers.
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July 10, 2012
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McCormick: They would step up and step down the voltage that comes out of the
generator.
Bird: Out of the generator.
McCormick: Yes.
Bird: And the wiring -- you would have to do all new wiring?
McCormick: In some areas that do not have the wiring to them to today, because it
wasn't extended out beyond the com rooms and the IT area when the building was first
built.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Just want to be certain I understand, John. Right now we have backup power
to our IT operation, so the servers aren't completely out at a loss, so they can continue
to operate and, then, they can shut them down as needed?
McCormick: Uh-huh.
Hoaglun: So, this -- would -- would this enhancement allow for a fully functioning City
Hall? When we talk about emergency backup and I know when there is emergency --
power goes out, stairways have lights, those types of things, to allow evacuation of the
building, but when we talk about emergency backup power, what does that entail?
Does that mean a fully operational City Hall if power is out or is it a limited capacity?
McCormick: It would be -- and thank you, Councilman Hoaglun. It would be very near
fully operational and I hedge a little bit on that, because it depends on how things are
designed and what we find when we go to make the installation and that sort of thing.
Right now we have talked about having recovery areas on every floor. So, for example,
this area here would be a recovery area, as well as Development Services on the south
end and the Finance area on the north end. So, you would have three recovery areas
on each floor. That's an alternative to just lighting up the whole building and providing
power to every space. Probably would not involve putting backup power to the cubicles,
but more to the office areas themselves.
Hoaglun: Okay. Thank you.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
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Rountree: We are sure that the current generator has the capacity to provide the
service?
McCormick: It does. We have load tested it. In fact, that was one of the things that we
did last year to verify whether or not we could do that and if we did it, would it be able to
do that. So, the issue with our current generator is -- just keep the seal on it going and
you can keep the power going.
De Weerd: Mark.
Niemeyer: Madam Mayor, Members of Council, just as a refresher, we just completed
the COOP plan development. The table top exercises took place about two weeks ago.
This was probably the number one issue that came through that table top exercise is
the lack of backup power to this building. One of the things that we discovered when
we met with John is that this enhancement will not support the HVAC system. That's
Important to remember. So, we are going to have to find alternatives for fans and
whatnot in the summertime, but it does provide power to those workstations, so that
folks can come in, especially if we have an extended power outage, and at least get
some work done. We will just have to modify our dress code, probably, for a little bit to
stay cool, but it would get generator power to those workstations.
McCormick: Thank you, Chief Niemeyer, for that clarification. There is probably not
any possible way to provide the backup power that we need to run the HVAC system. It
would just be enormously expensive and during times of emergency disaster being
comfortable with the temperature is probably not at the forefront of most people's minds.
You know, it's organizing and coordinating and managing the activities associated with
whatever that situation is.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I'm still working on the concept of having to do some rewiring. If -- if the
issue on backup power is that the HVAC system would take too much, wouldn't it make
more sense to run a switch from the HVAC system someplace so that if you turn on the
backup generator you turn off the HV system -- HVAC system, but still use all the rest of
the wiring that's already in the building? I'm trying to wrap my head around why we are
doing a duplicate wiring system if we are going to have 90 percent of the building
operating. We should be able to just substitute that power for what we are getting off of
Idaho Power's line and maybe just have a switch that shuts the HVAC off.
McCormick: Thank you, Councilman Zaremba.
Zaremba: I don't know if that makes sense or not, but --
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July 10, 2012
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McCormick: It does. And it's not that you have to rewire the whole building, but there
are -- there is areas that power would have to be delivered to that do not have the
switch to deliver it there or maybe the right switch and the right power cabling itself. So,
that's just part of the consideration. As we have with all of the other situations where we
have involved having to do some rework or modification to the building, we have always
found that there is more there than what we thought. So, we would just plan for that
and would design only the minimum required to deliver a mirror full capacity kind of
capability. So, I don't know how to answer your question specifically until we get further
into it and say do we -- do we have that ability to just shut that down and redirect the
power to its locations without knowing whether or not we have the infrastructure in place
to do that.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor. I guess I need to clarify my question. What I'm thinking is
that if we think that most of the building can be operation -- if a backup power system
has the energy to provide operations in this building, we already have that wired. All we
are talking about is change the source of the power from a wire that comes in from
Idaho Power to a wire that comes in from our backup generator, but the distribution
within the building is already here, everybody already has some connection to the
current source and if all we are doing is substituting a source, I don't understand why
more internal wiring -- why wouldn't we just use all the existing wiring, except for the one
thing that needs to be shut, which is the HVAC.
McCormick: You could do that. I think where the issue becomes is you have to put the
two additional transformers in to step up and step down the voltage that's required for
these areas, because you couldn't bring it straight in from the generator, for example,
without doing that. And whatever is associated with that -- of doing that, I don't know
yet and I'm just saying that it could involve additional wiring depending on where those
transformers are located specifically and what that would involve in terms of switches
and things of that nature. So, we know tentatively we have one planned for the north
end of the building and one for the south end. Where exactly those are going to be
located I don't know yet. We are in the process of designing that now.
Zaremba: Okay. Well, I would make it clear that I'm in favor of the idea. I think this
needs to be done, so --
McCormick: We will do it.
Zaremba: I know the engineers will get it right, so --
McCormick: Okay. And I'm sensitive to the economics of the situation given that we
have, you know, certainly invested heavily already and we want to be conscious of
doing that as economical as possible using the existing infrastructure where it's possible
to do that. So, anything that we add on to that would be through necessity to make the
system optimal -- or fully capable. Right now the design that we have is running right
around 100,000 dollars. We have not met yet with the directors or the Mayor to discuss
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some of the logistics involved in implementing that, where these locations should be
held, you know, that kind of thing.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: John, the generator as it sits now, where does it hook into? Isn't it at the box?
McCormick: Yes. The switch box in the basement.
Bird: Well, why -- if it's capable, why can't you just turn it up and bring it through the
box? Why do you have to have other transformers? If that electrical box right now is
incapable of handling the power that we got now --
McCormick: Uh-huh.
Bird: -- and if this generator is capable of putting the power out that we need, which
when we bought it I understood could, maybe it isn't set up right now to do it, but if it
goes in through the main switching gear, why do we have to have other transformers? I
don't understand it. I'm not an electrician to start with, so I don't understand it, but just
common sense tells me that if -- if the electrical panel right now handles all the power to
the -- to the city hall -- am I not right?
McCormick: Yes.
Bird: To the electrical room and that's where the generator power comes in right there
at the mast; right?
McCormick: Uh-huh.
Bird: The same as the power coming in from Idaho Power.
McCormick: That's correct.
Bird: Why -- why do we have to have other transformers? I don't know if you guys have
talked to an electrical engineer or anything about this or why it's not happening or why it
can't happen. I want more clarification before I'm for this.
McCormick: Just for background information, we did meet with an electrical engineer
from Tri-State. They were the contractor that originally wired the building, so we
thought it was appropriate to go back to them and talk to them. They were most familiar
with things and they have proven to be a fairly reliable contractor and I will be open and
honest about this. I don't know enough about electrical engineering to say that there is
alternative ways. You have to kind of depend upon their judgment about what they can
deliver in terms of voltage to specific locations within the system that they have now and
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
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how much that system would have to change to provide the backup capability we are
talking about. So, it seems logical that it just means firing up the generator and flipping
light switches and everything, but it's not quite that straight forward.
Bird: You're dealing with Tri-State?
McCormick: Yes.
Bird: Okay.
De Weerd: Any other questions, Council? Okay. Thank you, John.
McCormick: Thank you.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: He had another enhancement. Did he want to talk about it?
11:25 -11:35 -Mayor's ®epartment
De Weerd: I -- yeah. Chief, do you want to --
Lavey: Madam Mayor, Council, I noticed on the agenda that they had police last and
was going into withdrawal since I asked to speak earlier today, so that's why I'm here.
When the Mayor was recently reelected to a new term she put together four focus
groups to explore some of the services or activities that the city was doing and one of
those was a communications focus group. Now, I recall telling her that I was interested
in being a part of that group with the thought of just participating and in the course of
that structure I ended up being the chairman of that group. So, I want to talk a little bit
about what -- what came up in that focus group. Talk about some recommendations
that they suggested to the city and, then, I just will tell you that the five members of that
focus group sat down with the Mayor and explained to her where they were coming
from. But I will tell you that recommendation was from the citizens and not from me. I
was able to remain quiet. I know that that's a surprise. Let's see if Robert was standing
by me. I'm going to talk about the -- what the focus group come up with and, then,
Robert -- I'm going to turn it over to Robert to answer some more specific questions.
What, really, the words on this slide is just a pretty way of saying we are trying to look at
the good, the bad, and the ugly. What's working, what's not working, what we should
get rid of, and what we could be doing better. And some of the things that the group
came up with was annual customer service relations training for the entire city. And I'm
going to talk about all these recommendations and, then, I'm going to go specifically into
a couple of them. So, I'm just going to touch on them briefly right now. An information
kiosk in the City Hall lobby. Redo and update the web page. Integrate social media. A
frequently asked questions area. A mobile application due to the smart phones and
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tablets having an application that can determine that's how the people are
communicating with the city and, then, switch over and, then, public information officer.
City Hall is the face of the city. This is really kind of our focal point downtown. This is
what everybody when they think of the city they think of City Hall and as you come in
from the parking lot we have a beautiful plaza, we have a beautiful fountain, we have a
beautiful foyer, but it's really dark and void and there is nothing there, it's -- people --
see people come in the lobby every day and if Lila is not there with her door open it's --
it's really impersonal, it's really kind of sterile, if the sun is not shining it's dark in there
and the group actually took some pictures -- and I don't know what time of day they took
the pictures, but when you look at these pictures it's really kind of depressing and I don't
believe that's the image that we want here at the city. One of the proposals that they
have come up with was having a kiosk in the lobby. Now, to put in a kiosk in the lobby
we start thinking about staffing and part-time positions, full-time positions and
everything else and one of the suggestions that I had was volunteers. It's -- City Hall is
the community's building and what better way to make them a part of the community
and perhaps get them more interested in what we are doing as a city than to get our city
citizens to volunteer there. Really be kind of like that Walmart greeters where when you
walk in they are greeted, they are -- they are friendly, they are saying hello and they are
answering questions, giving information and direction and, then, perhaps someday we
could even do some things like accept volunteer applications or accept payments or
licensing or something. I mean I'm just looking into the future. But the other thing is is
with volunteers you have less control, so there has to be a mechanism in place that if
someone is not there, then, what do people do instead of just stand in the lobby. And
so we were suggesting some sort of a sign that says this -- this booth is staffed by
citizen volunteers. If there is no one there, then, point them to the -- the signs where to
go and, then, if you're interested in volunteering please contact this number. Later on in
my presentation for police I'm going to talk about our volunteer coordinator position. We
currently have apart-time position, and talk about a position sharing where we can give
some of our services that we currently have and some of our volunteers that we
currently have over to the city. These -- these numbers were prepared by Public Works.
They are rough numbers, but in order to put this in place we are estimating about
25,000 dollars. This 25,000 dollars would include any sort of desk, any sort of phone
lines, fiber, electrical connections or anything else to make that kiosk work. Also add a
phone and a computer. As we said, our intent would be to staff it by volunteers, but if
that is -- that either doesn't work in the future or if we want to increase that, then, in --
sometime in future budget years you could look at additional staffing requests if desired.
Communications manager. This is kind of a title that we have for the PIO. One of the
things -- and I know that this is -- why is it important? We are the third largest city in the
state. With the growth that we are facing sometime in some of the city employees'
careers we could be the second. We need a focal point that is our spokesperson, is a
person that actually gathers the information, works on branding and messaging. If the
media has an interest they know who to call. Every single time we have some sort of
incident, whether it's good or bad, they call around until the point where, okay, well,
think this is the person that we are going to stick with them with this time and that's
really not very professional and it really is not getting the desired results that I think that
we would like to achieve. Building relationships with the media, pitching stories, news
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
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conferences, editorial boards, interviews, press releases, media kits, opinion editorials,
but this is for the entire city. I can tell you that in the police department we use a
spokesperson, my deputy chief, and we will continue to do that, but I will tell you that
everything that we do is reactive. Nothing is proactive. And we really need to work on
the proactive. I think that covers it at the moment. The communication manager would
also provide media training for the city, what to say, what not to say, how to prepare it.
We'd actually assist as coordinator for news conferences and everything else. But it
wouldn't replace the -- the existing staff roles. There is a time and a place that the
Mayor and the department directors need to be up front and facing everybody and
explain to them this is what we are doing, but the communication manager would assist
us in getting the right people there, getting the message out -- continue to get the
message out. As it stands right now is we are at the whim of the media. It's -- they
either print it or don't print it or they print it once and they print it ten times. Usually the
bad stuff they print more and the good stuff they print once. And we really need to work
on improving that. Well, like it or not, social media is the norm. It is here -- some would
argue it's here to stay, some would argue it's a fad and it's going to go away. It's not
going to go away, it's just going to change. That is the mechanism that a lot of people
are communicating with today and if you look at the city Facebook page and the police
department Facebook page and the parks department Facebook page, we are all
getting our story out there, but we are getting our story out there, but we are not really
working together as well and the communication manager would actually assist that --
that, too. And as I said before is our -- our deputy chief would actually continue to do
the on camera stuff. We talked about a PIO for public safety, we talked about a PIO for
police. It takes a specific skill set, really, to understand the police and to -- what you
can legally say, what you can't say, when to say it, that sort of thing. But we are
comfortable continuing with what we are doing now, even though we have a -- probably
a daily occurrence where we are dealing with the media, we would hope that the
communication manager could serve as the -- the screening and, then, contact us when
we actually need to be involved. And, then, it would also deal with the -- the video
content that we -- that we do and potentially also the -- the streaming of these Council
meetings. That is the presentation that we have. I'm going to have Robert come up
and speak a little bit more specifics or to just answer any questions that Council may
have. Do you want to say something? Did I cover it?
Simison: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, yeah, I'm here to help answer any
questions regarding this proposal, I would like to point out from certain aspects one of
the things that was really specific with our last community liaison Luke was skill sets.
You know, he was someone that did bring slot -- brought us up into 2012 with social
media, with video, with a lot of different aspects. As we are going through the
interviews trying to find someone to replicate just those specific skill sets, as well as to
be a good community liaison to go out, they really are two different types of skill sets
that are out there in what people have and bring to the table. While we do have certain
things that we definitely are going to continue with those community liaison positions, I
think anyone can go and post on social media, to keep that stuff up to date, but it's
creating those messages, getting out the information from various people, working with
the fire department as they are trying to continue to build their video that they are doing
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through their department and whatnot. So, this is someone really to work with all the
departments in a real meaningful way. It's not going to replace what we are doing in the
Mayor's office, Shelly is still going to continue to do the work that she does, but we do
do a fair amount of city wide stuff from our office and they will help supplement what we
do, but work more closely with all the departments that we just don't have the physical
time to do well on a proactive basis continually. So; with that I would be happy to
answer any questions, along with the chief.
Lavey: I do have one additional comment. Just one additional. I will tell you that we
discussed where this -- if we were to hire this person where should we house this
person? Because it doesn't need to be in the Mayor's office. It could be anywhere in
the city for that matter. We discussed housing it over at the police department. We
discussed housing it in a different department, because this position is for the entire city,
not a specific department. We just feel it makes sense to house them in the Mayor's
office or maybe in the Council area. It would be an employee for the entire city, not just
for the Mayor specifically. But I just think it makes more sense to have that position
here in this building. And we will stand for any questions.
De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: The kiosk idea I think is a good one. That leads me to ask at one point there
was discussion about encouraging somebody by way of a contract to come in and set
up a booth that would be coffee, doughnuts, snacks and their rent for the space would
be that they also had to answer information questions. Did that idea go anywhere or --
De Weerd: No.
Lavey: Madam Mayor, Council Member Zaremba, it's my understanding that there was
no interest in any vendor for that, because they couldn't calculate the return on
investment to do that and so there was no interest. I would just answer the question,
though, is that the person you want speaking for your city, too. So, I mean it would -- it's
just as a young teenager and everything else that would involve training and everything
else specifically in that -- we would like to have a little greater control there, too. But
there is risk with citizens, too. But I think the citizen idea is appropriate. It's their
building, they may as well be a part of it.
Zaremba: Uh-huh.
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Madam Mayor. Was there any discussion with the committee to have an
automated kiosk?
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Lavey: There -- I don't believe there was discussion really to have an automated kiosk.
That would get part of what they were trying to accomplish, but it wouldn't get you that
face-to-face contact that they were trying to -- trying to get where you actually get a
smile and a warm greeting when you walk into the building. In the best of both worlds I
guess you would probably have aface-to-face contact there when you can staff it and,
then, have the automatic kiosk there when no one is there. But, no, we didn't
specifically look at just an automatic kiosk.
Simison: And if I could just add, on one of the conversations was to have a computer
there where people could do certain things from that place when they walk in, whether it
be to sign up for receiving information from the city at various points, because a lot of
that is done electronically. So, to a certain extent, yes, but nothing -- nothing like where
you might have a pad like this to navigate around has been discussed. What you would
do -- and I would say that we would have to -- I know that Brian and Community
Development is very good at those Adobe touch screens to walk you through places. I
think that we could do -- you could come up with something very simple, you know,
automated functions using a system like that if we knew what we may want to try to do,
so we could definitely incorporate that, since we have already thought of having a public
computer of some sort down there. And I would just add, so you know, Public Works
did put some tape on the ground out there in the lobby that you can see. We split that a
little bit. I would have a few suggestions on making it just a little bit larger to square off
in the corner and we could make it a little deeper and have a larger lift for people to walk
through and get about 36 inches in case we have elderly people with walkers who need
to get back there to man it. But it would be on wheels and could be relocated from there
over to the other side where the glass readers are. So, two different locations where it
would work or be moved if we needed more space there and things. So, we are trying
to make it functional, yet not take away from what is there, find the right location for it, et
cetera. And we do have a cost right now of about 6,000 just for the construction of it.
With some of the modifications it could go to six to 75 hundred. That's why that range
was on there.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: My question I was going to ask if -- is it going to be mobile? Is it something
that can be moved and, then, are we going to be hard wiring each side or are we going
to go everything wireless on this. So, if they have a tablet, they got a cell phone, they
can call, so we don't have those hardwire costs. What's the plan?
Simison: The intention was primary -- was thinking the city wireless would work for
basic services. The phone, obviously, needs to be hardwired in that area, but they --
looking at the area they didn't think it would be that difficult from the two locations that
we have talked about. I know when we talked about the coffee kiosk back in the day
some of the concerns were the hardwire costs and trying to get the right voltage into
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that. A lot of that comes away from this. There will be some costs and that's why the
budget enhancement did have a range. I think that that budget -- that range could
probably be dropped by 10,000, honestly, and leave plenty of wiggle room for what we
need to do. But we are really just talking about maybe even putting in electrical. I think
the one side already has the electrical nearby, so it's really not even an issue, so --
Hoaglun: Okay. Thank you.
De Weerd: Anything further from Council?
Hoaglun: On this or other?
De Weerd: On this or other.
Hoaglun: I'm ready to move to other now.
De Weerd: Okay.
Hoaglun: Communications director. This is a question for the two chiefs I guess,
because bigger cities than we are have I know a police spokesperson and they respond
to incidents. I mean going to communications director, one who is -- does the proactive,
puts things together, that will probably push way into the future any -- any hope of
having a spokesperson for your respective departments. Is that something you're
comfortable with?
Lavey: Madam Mayor, Councilman Hoaglun, the answer you want is yes. And I know
what you're getting at. And like I stated before is you get what you pay for and we are
currently in a reactive state. So, if we had desires to go more proactive you would want
to have that sooner. But we have talked about using that one person for the entire city.
I will tell you from experience of neighboring communities and other communities where
they try to have one spokesperson for the entire doesn't work. I will tell you that the
commitment that the fire chief and I have is that we are going to try the one, see how it
works, and if we need to propose something in the future I will come in front of you and
try to justify it the best I can and go from there. But I will tell you that based on our
current plans and our current needs and our current priorities, it's way off into the future
for that sort of position.
Hoaglun: And that's my point. It's not that it's not going to happen someday, it's just
that it does push it off.
Lavey: It does.
Hoaglun: And, Chief Niemeyer, do you want to comment?
Niemeyer: Yeah. Madam Mayor, Councilman Hoaglun, I would agree with Chief Lavey
completely. While not ideal, we are not exactly at an ideal economy and an ideal
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environment and I do believe we areaways off in doing that. But we do need that one
percent in the city to help us get the right message out. As an example of that I am now
tweeting -- twittering, whatever you want to call it, so when we have updates --
De Weerd: It's not twittering.
Niemeyer: -- to fire I try and make an updated picture and tweet out and what I have
found is that members of the media have been picking up those twits or tweets or
whatever we want to call them.
De Weerd: Are you calling yourself a twit?
Niemeyer: Well, my kids do it all the time, so I may as well join the crowd. The
question is am I doing it right. And so to have that one point of contact in the city that
oversees our communications and that messaging is certainly a big help. I agree with
Jeff that we are still going to have our representatives in our department getting in front
of the camera, but having that person to make sure we are doing it right and sending
out the right message is also a very good thing. So, it's a team effort moving forward.
Hoaglun: And, Madam Mayor, just a comment from a reactive sense, both your
departments do very well with people that you send out to talk about a particular
incident. Tracy does a great job handling whatever comes and reacts to the media
request. I know Chief Niemeyer -- I know your folks a lot of times it's the captains on a
fire that come out and they are asked questions. Fortunately, it's about the fire, it's
about things that are in their wheel house. They can talk to that issue and they do a
good job. I remember Captain Bennings and Captain Kelly one time just knocked it out
of the park on what they did and what happened and how they responded and what the
outcome was it was perfect for what TV wanted. So, those folks do a good job
responding. From a proactive sense when you get some help and do some things that
way it would be good, but I think, yeah, it's going to be something you guys are going to
have to respond to the requests that come in on a reactive basis for a period longer if
this is the route we go. So, just need to make sure that you are -- you have a comfort
with that at this time.
Lavey: Madam Mayor, Councilman Hoaglun, one of the -- and you would have great
experience in this, but one of the things that a PIO or communications manager,
whatever you want to call them, is beneficial for is really kind of getting everybody to the
table, the interest, putting the information out, coordinating, setting up like in a press
conference, just setting up the room, laying the stage out, having that person -- the
specific person come in and give their few bullet points and, then, leave and, then, have
that communications director come in, follow up, and give out the press packets and
everything else. When you use that sort of protocol this person would benefit both
police and fire well.
Hoaglun: Thank you.
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De Weerd: Anything further from Council?
Rountree: Madam Mayor, just a clarification that this discussion takes care of not only
the City Hall, but the Mayor's department presentation. Okay. Thank you.
10:25 - 11:25 -Parks Department
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you. Our parks department.
Siddoway: Give Todd just a moment to get the PowerPoint up.
De Weerd: Welcome, Steve.
Siddoway: Thank you.
De Weerd: You have had a busy couple weeks, haven't you.
Siddoway: We have had a busy couple months.
De Weerd: Couple years.
Siddoway: Getting ready for Kleiner Park grand opening and -- while the computer is
trying to read the thumb drive -- Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, while we are
waiting for the new thumb drive maybe I will get started by picking up where we left off
at the last strategic presentation that we gave you last month and the beginning of my
presentation is just a summary of some of the recent accomplishments and challenges
that we are facing. I can certainly talk to you about that without the slides up, but recent
accomplishments -- it's certainly noteworthy that the Kleiner Park grand opening was
almost exactly one month from today, June 9th. Today is July 10th. And we are very
proud of the way that went and have had many positive comments. Rachel is now
working on the scrapbook that we are going to be sending soon to Mr. Kleiner. Several
people stopped by to sign the scrapbook that day and we are getting photos printed and
we are going to put together a nice little book for him of that day and some of the
construction process. So, we have also this year been able to get additional golf course
trees planted. We got the recycling pilot program up and running out at Settlers Park
that we are excited about and based on its success we can take the others -- other
parks in partnership with SWAC. We have implemented our smoke free parks policy
that was adopted by Council last year and it was submitted this year as part of the AIC
award program, received an honorable mention there as part of their livable cities
initiative. Our community garden out at Kleiner Park is now fully up and running. The
partnership we had out there with a local garden group is working and crops are
growing and will include donations back to the Meridian Food Bank as part of that
process. The Tully Park dugouts were something that we are pretty proud of. The
improvements that have been made there. I was able to show you the ten year Treat
City USA award last month and we are very excited that we were able to get that. And
we got the -- that first annual holiday classic volleyball tournament this last winter, which
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was great. It's a benefit to Meridian Hope Tree and we hope to be able to continue that
-- that new tradition as well. We also have several changes that face us, some of which
relate to budget requests that we will talk about today. Others that we are simply
working on. Large events in Kleiner Park are a new challenge for us and we have
talked about that several times recently, as well as the increased TUP coordination that
-- for outside events that use our parks and facilities throughout the city. We continue to
work on the MYB overflow parking issue and are awaiting some cost estimates from
Meridian Youth Baseball from their contractors that they feel they may be able to get
some better pricing. The Tully skate park has had its challenges this spring and
appreciate the efforts of the police department -- I don't know if Chief Lavey is still
around, but the bicycle officers have been helpful in helping to address some of the
behavioral issues we have been experiencing out there. Goose management is a new
challenge for us out at Kleiner Park.
De Weerd: How is that going?
Siddoway: It's mixed. There is -- we have got the numbers down, but those that are
remaining are pretty comfortable and Ithink we -- you know, we had to wait through the
molting season by our current management permit and I think we are ready to start
chasing geese again and try and get those numbers reduced just as low as we can.
De Weerd: Well, maybe we should try what Boise has been doing in some of their
parks --
Siddoway: Off leash dog park.
De Weerd: -- and before and after hours for off leash.
Siddoway: We have Ithink -- it's worth exploring. We have -- well, I'd like to get some
feedback -- been looking for some from Boise parks as to how that's going. I know they
have taken it out of some and increased in its others and I think there is lessons learned
from them that we could certainly gather.
De Weerd: Yeah. I'm not sure if they really use it as goose management, but it might
be a good idea.
Siddoway: The Storey Park master plan, land and water conservation fund conversion
project continues to go on. We are currently in the middle of getting the appraisals done
for that and expect those in the next couple weeks. We do have a disconnected
pathway system as one of our challenges, but thanks to the efforts of Jay and the
funding we received that system starting to connect. The field house contract plan and
the needs for the -- like the chart you see at the bottom of our increasing gym uses by
year and our need for a field house and gym space that could provide is something we
need to talk about and the Settlers Park tennis complex, which has also been on radar
for several years, we will talk about that with one of the enhancements. So, I will move
on from there. We do our best to use the city's funds wisely that we are entrusted with.
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
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The Kleiner Park donation or the 25 million dollar donation by Gene Kleiner -- and while
that's not typical, I think it's indicative of the fact that we do seek out partnerships
whenever and where ever we can and if we weren't in that mode or mind set I don't
know that we would be where we are today. We have been successful in attracting
several partnerships over the years and certainly this is the most significant one we
have seen to date. We have volunteers -- a volunteer program that's been very
successful and our largest year yet, last year, with over 4,400 volunteer hours, saving
us 68,000 dollars of labor in the budget and the Tully Park dugout renovations that I
mentioned were completed in house, having us approximately 8,000 dollars over what it
would have cost us if it were to be contracted out. One of the things we recently started
tracking out of interest is some of the economic benefits to tournaments that we are
involved in. The fast pitch -- girls fast pitch tournament that was held in May, we
calculate and estimated 63,000 dollars that was spent over Memorial Day weekend as a
result of hosting that here in Meridian. There was also a rugby tournament not directly
sponsored by us, but an outside TUP and it was accommodated in our parks, 17 teams
from multiple states and we estimate that also brought in another 85,000 dollars spent
not to the city directly, you know, not City Hall, not to our budget, but, you know, money
that was spent at hotels and at restaurants and things in the city and we think those are
great catalysts to activity and economic development and we'd like to see those
continue. So, today we are here to talk about our enhancements specifically. We
started the process with ten. During the balancing process and such we had three that
were withdrawn, so we will have seven of those to talk about today. The first one is one
that was withdrawn, but it's worth mentioning. The maintenance facility site
improvements was drawn, not because we don't intend to do it, it's because City
Council approved the budget amendment that was requested a few months ago and the
project is moving forward as we speak. Our next meeting with the construction
manager and the architect is also tomorrow to go over the progress that has been made
on the construction drawings as we move towards a bid date next month.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Bird.
Bird: Steve, before we go on with that, any farther -- are we still on for an August bid on
that?
Siddoway: Yes. That is still a go, correct, Mike? August we are looking at for throwing
out the bid.
Bird: Thank you.
Siddoway: So, the next enhancement -- and the first that we are requesting is Kleiner
Park electrical service upgrades. This is one that was anticipated in the CIP and has
been there for the last couple of years. It was an idea that was value engineered out of
the original project, but the Kleiner Park Trust did provide us -- if you can see the red
circle and drawing in the corner, they did provide us an electrical transformer box at that
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location that could provide future power to that event area and that's what we would like
to continue on with that concept. What this would -- what this enhancement would do is
provide power outlets to that area that is for the main event area of Kleiner Park. It
would give a step down transformer, the service panel and wiring in two directions, kind
of wrapping around from that transformer or around that circle to provide eight in-ground
multiple receptacle sites and give us a little bit for electrical and the repair and
maintenance of those. Yes. Questions?
Hoaglun: Yes. Mayor and Steve. On this, that in-ground multiple receptacle sites,
mean when I have been in the park there have been people using this open space,
playing Frisbee, doing, you know, open space stuff, kicking soccer balls. Are they going
to be like these out here where they are above ground, sticking up and are they going to
be in the middle of the --
Siddoway: That is a good question. Are they in the -- like the irrigation boxes, flush
with the ground? So, flush with the ground is --
Hoaglun: Great.
Siddoway: -- where we are at with these.
De Weerd: That's good, because those are dumb.
Hoaglun: That just helps, because, you know --
Siddoway: They are like an irrigation box.
Hoaglun: Yeah. I just -- you know, become a tripping hazard, it's a problem and I know
it's a challenge and probably a little more cost to having them flush, but I think it's worth
doing that for that open space, so thanks.
Siddoway: Any other questions on that one?
De Weerd: I know your guys didn't design that, so --
Siddoway: Right.
De Weerd: Sorry. They do look dumb, though.
Siddoway: The field house fund, that was in a request for this year, has also been
withdrawn, as promised during the discussions with the new maintenance facility
building. We have withdrawn this one, but I leave the slide in here just to point out that
when -- we still do need the field house. It's not completely going away. This year's
request is going away. Getting the field house would put us one step closer to meeting
our need for indoor recreation facilities. It would provide funding for a construction
manager as part of it and it would be our intent to do so and that just to reiterate the
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point that existing funds that Council has already approved would be used in the coming
year for design and construction documents and better cost estimates for this facility
prior to us actually budgeting for any construction. And there is still projects funding for
this project in the CIP in future years, but not this year. Making sure. Our next one is
the pathway projects. Waiting for the system to catch up. There we go. Every year we
have come before you for the last several years with the same request, it's a one
hundred thousand dollar annual request. It is a high priority for Meridian Parks and
Recreation Commission and see some of our commissioners and the top picks are
there. In the Council outlay it gives us the money needed for connections within the
system and a little bit -- and the operating for asphalt maintenance and for weed control.
Recent pathway projects that we have completed or are working on and are nearly
complete with the funds we have been given previously -- well, the first one listed there
is a master plan update that wasn't with the enhancement request. The other -- the rest
are. But we did complete a pathways masters plan update in January of this year. The
Jackson Drain Pathway, which is the east end of Bud Porter, was completed last year.
The Fothergill pathway connection was completed and the Heroes Park pathway was
completed. The pictures at the bottom are all of Five Mile Creek pathway segment H-1,
a lot near Pine. Pine to Badley. I put nearly completed on there. The pathway
itself is done. All that's left are some access management gates that are being powder
coated and need to be installed. Once those are in it will be completely done. Ideas for
the next pathway projects. The commission is interested in starting a pathway
directional signage program now that we are starting to get some connections, starting
in the area of Bud Porter. We have a need to get some new signs up at Bud Porter as
well. The ones that are there are the old style and they are beginning to fade. The
Packard Estates pathway, the connection to East River Valley at Kleiner Park is
something we have been exploring. The HOA is involved, there has been meetings that
Jay has attended. There is challenges there with a couple of homeowners that we'd
have to get voluntary easements from and hold all the cards, but the HOA has agreed to
work with them directly and see if they can make something happen. If they can we are
interested. Tuscany Lakes would have a connection along Ten Mile Creek if and when
something does happen with the Public Works project down there. The Norse Lateral is
one that's near -- near Linder that goes between Bridgetower and Sawtooth Middle
School. That's one that is a high priority connection for the Commission, because it's a
safe route to school idea. It's adjacent to an area, though, that could be developed --
built by a developer, so we have been holding off on it for several years, but with
nothing happening there in -- in several years there is some interest in exploring that
and possibly using some existing -- an existing sewer easement that exists that could
provide pathway connection. Now, the Ridenbaugh pathway Segment F at Eagle Road
is a similar one where a small path -- a small section is needed with long pathway
segments that are existing on either side and that one is one that could also be
developer driven, but has not been in the past decade and we could make a small
improvement possibly and get a larger connection. And, then, Five Mile Creek -- the
extension of what is being worked near Pine right now trying to get that last little piece
from Badley to Fairview is definitely a priority for us. Still in need of an easement,
though, and -- but we -- I put CDBG on there, because we would expect to come -- that
to come forward as a CDBG proposal given that it's in the approved area for CDBG
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funds and would not necessarily be something we would spend part of the 100,000 on.
Which one of these it would specifically be spent on I can't currently say, but these are
ideas going into the coming fiscal year and would stand for any questions on pathway
projects.
De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Bird: I have none.
Siddoway: The next one is the Settlers Village Square tennis courts, phase two. We
currently have through phase one the two courts that were constructed in this area, as
well as the horseshoe pits and the additional picnic shelters in this area. The phase to
projects would -- is proposed to build out the remaining undeveloped area of Settlers
Park. As you know we have been hoping to build an indoor facility with partners with
the Meridian Tennis Association. They have been actively working. They are still out
there. They have been trying to raise the funds to build a couple million dollar indoor
facility, but they have not been successful at raising significant funds and they are in
agreement that they would like to see us move back to our original intent of completing
the outdoor tennis facilities as has been on the books now for about four or five years.
That proposal would include two more sets of -- well, let me just say the funds that
Council has already allocated there is enough for us to build the additional two sets of
courts. What this enhancement would do is -- I will go over this on the next slide.
Focus on the additional improvement, including parking, the exhibition court, some
raised between courts, and a shade structure that can be used for tournaments, a
hitting wall on this side and, then, these are the quick start courts and the Meridian
Tennis Association is actually still actively pursuing a grant through the USTA that
would help us fund that part of it. So, the request is for just under 300,000. The CIP did
anticipate 300,000 dollars in it this year. The capital outlay needs that that would fund
would be the parking lot, the exhibition court, the shade structure, the hitting wall, the
raised seating, and the design fees. And, then, there is some minor personnel and
operating funds in there as well. Here you can see the note that the partnership is
applying for the grant for the quick start courts. If unsuccessful those would not move
forward, but if they get the funding, which they are quite hopeful that they will that would
be part of the project as well. And with that questions?
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor and Steve, just because we are talking about tennis and this is
similar and it's played on an tennis court, we have a large group of citizens and
surrounding people who play Pickleball --
Siddoway: Uh-huh.
Hoaglun: -- and it's played on a tennis court and it's -- it's like tennis, it's like ping pong,
played on the size of about a badminton court and it's those of us who are getting older
who don't want to run as far in tennis, but it's still a quick sport and very active and that's
something I know they have an agreement with Sawtooth that -- to put some Picketball
courts in the summer, they play twice a week, and, then, in the wintertime I think they
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have been using Hometown WMCA. But that's just something that we may get a
request down the road to put down tape on our tennis courts or maybe even looking at
putting in Pickleball courts, because it is something that overactive folks are doing and
it's really caught on in Arizona and California and some of those states and probably
something that we might be looking at down the road here, so with this group -- and
they are very active and they are very organized, so something to keep in mind. I know
we have got this moving forward and this enhancement ahead of us, but just keep that
in our minds and look for those opportunities and I know your recreation folks do all the
time is is there something that we can -- we can offer this -- this other group as we build
something here, so --
Siddoway: Sure. And we have had a couple meetings with the Pickleball
representative. It's been several months now. But we did meet with them last year and
worked out some proposals, including the existing concrete pad that's out at Bear
Creek, we were willing to stripe something on there for them if they could bring in
portable nets. They indicated they were not interested in that. We have offered a site
that was originally intended for a possible tennis court at Gordon Harris that if they could
come up with the partnership dollars that we have a place that they could build one and
that would be something we would like to work with them on if they can raise some
money to build something and, you know, the -- we have talked a little bit with them
about the quick start courts. I guess the quick start courts are a little bit -- they are
almost the same size, but they are a little bit different and whether or not that would
work seems to be up in the air. Certainly, you know, if we did try and stripe something
here for Pickleball on the main courts I'd probably pick one set of courts and stripe
those, so that at tournament time for tennis there is -- there would be multiple courts
available that didn't have the dual striping on it. My current thought.
Hoaglun: Appreciate it, Steve. Thank you.
Siddoway: Okay. Any other comments or questions?
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Steve, on those start up courts --
Siddoway: Yes.
Bird: -- tell me what they are, not being a --
Siddoway: They are smaller courts for kids. They actually use a smaller racquet and a
different ball that doesn't travel as far, more like a foam ball, and they are the really
popular thing in tennis right now that's getting kids into -- into tennis.
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Bird: And it was, basically, brought forward by the Tennis Association, if I'm not
positive. It was never in the original plans as --
Siddoway: Those were not in the original plans. That's why our proposal only includes
that if the grant comes through.
Bird: Okay. I think Councilman Hoaglun has got a good idea on those Pickleball courts
and lalso -- the way the use of -- excuse me -- use of the Bocce courts or whatever
they are called out there at Kleiner Park -- and I'm not too sure if one or two of them in
Settlers wouldn't go over pretty big, too.
Siddoway: I think it would go over big.
Bird: I can't believe it.
Siddoway: The commission has been talking about whether to include more -- we kind
of feel like do we want to -- we know they would be successful at Settlers because there
is just a lot of people and if you want to put -- continue putting all the eggs in one basket
-- they are actually interested in exploring putting them in Renaissance Park in south
Meridian, because it fits in with the theme of Italian subdivision, the Italian name of
Renaissance and there wouldn't be a large traffic impact. It is a neighborhood park, but
they are looking at the possibility of additional Bocce courts as a desired amenity.
Bird: I -- follow up, Madam Mayor. I would -- I would say, you know, Settlers was
bought on the idea of being a sports park.
Siddoway: Yeah. Specifically tournaments.
Bird: And I would sooner see it in a park like that where the public's got more access
than in a neighborhood park, because as popular as it seems to be and it's growing, the
neighborhood park might not like it after a little bit, after -- you know, with all the traffic
going through, the people -- I wouldn't -- I wouldn't mind looking at -- getting a couple
courts in Settlers. I mean people are standing around waiting out there.
Siddoway: Yeah.
Bird: I mean it's unbelievable. I have never seen it before.
Siddoway: We will pass that on to the parks amenities and committee that works on the
park amenities and just pass on that there is some interest at exploring an additional
Bocce court at Settlers and we don't have that in our CIP currently, but they are not
super expensive, so we can do some investigation and see if we can make something
happen. Or we can find a partner.
Bird: And not only that, Steve, at Settlers we do have a lot better parking than you do at
a neighborhood court, so -- or a neighborhood park.
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Siddoway: Right. Okay.
Rountree: Madam Mayor, just on a final point on the Pickleball. I have had the
pleasure of sitting in on some of those meetings and having multiple phone calls with
folks that are very well organized and very much want the city to work with them and try
to do something. So, I think it's -- if and as we do move forward with this I think it should
be fully intended that at least some of these courts will be dual purpose, so you don't
build an expectation on the part of the tennis club or the Pickleball people that it's
mutually exclusive.
Siddoway: Okay.
Rountree: To me that takes -- takes care of the need and, then, it's a huge bunch of
people that are doing that very fast, but not quite as strenuous game of Pickleball.
Siddoway: We will pick a set of courts and just state the intent, that it's dual use from
the beginning.
Rountree: And it could be as opposed to a tennis complex. It could be a racquet sport
complex.
Siddoway: Uh-huh. The next enhancement is for street beautification and ACHD cost
share project. We have been made aware of multiple projects that we have been asked
to plan for, so many of them have been to Council and other forms and fashions through
agreements, through Planning and Public Works. There are two that Finance has
deemed as capital and three that are deemed operating. I will go through all three. All
five. Sorry. The first is the Franklin, Linder to Ten Mile project. The Parks Department
would -- would budget for the irrigation line that would be put in during the time of
construction. It would just be under the asphalt at this time for when the future medians
are punched in. I understand that the medians have been temporarily removed and it
will just be asphalted, but the intent is to have those medians come back in the future,
knowing that there are plans for future medians, it's certainly the most cost effective to
put the irrigation line and the wiring for that in now as part of the road construction
project and, then, it will just be accessed when the medians are punched in. The
Meridian split corridor two -- phase two, north curb and cross-over islands, basically
ACHD has been asked in the agreement to leave those areas with top soil and add a
couple inches -- an inch or so below the curb line and leave the rest to us, as opposed
to them having their own contractor do the landscaping. The amount that's in the
enhancement, 75,000 dollars, would be enough for us to do irrigation and landscaping
in those areas in preparation for whatever the artwork is that the -- this committee
comes up with that's working with the split corridor artwork. So, this is not money for the
art, just want to be clear about that. This is money for the landscaping and irrigation
around the art and redoing what's in the north curb when it gets tore up.
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De Weerd: It looks like the operating is taken care of if you just put these people in the
picture to work. It's looks like they are experienced.
Siddoway: That would be great. The Duane to Campton is on Ustick, so it's Ustick
Road, Duane to Campton. There is a drainage bed and an interim treatment. The
drainage bed we are budgeting for, but it is my opinion as the director that it should be
paid for and reimbursed by ACHD. There is no such agreement in place right now, but I
believe there should be one. It's a requirement on ACRD to landscape their own
drainage bed, but it worked really well last year at the Linder-Chinden drainage bed for
-- we took over the landscape project and got it done the way we want it done for us to
maintain and, then, ACHD reimbursed us. I think that should happen here as well. The
interim treatment is just the gravel between the detached sidewalk and the road and we
are responsible for that. The Amity-Eagle roundabout, I think we have 18,000 in there
for a landscape project. I think this needs more discussion. I didn't want to have it go in
with no landscaping and someone to say why didn't you think about this ahead of time.
But right now ACRD does not intend to landscape that round about and so we are
proposing funds that would landscape it. I have had some feedback and conversations
with the Mayor that ACHD ought to be responsible for landscaping their -- their
roundabout --
De Weerd: Yeah. And just a reminder, this was not a project we asked for. This was
their demonstration project and I really am emphatic about this one, in case you
wondered.
Rountree: Is it in the city?
De Weerd: It's not in the city.
Siddoway: It's not in the city limits yet.
De Weerd: No.
Siddoway: But it is in the impact area.
Bird: Not far from the city limits, but -- I'm like the Mayor --
Siddoway: So, if we -- if you want to -- it's totally up to you. I feel like I almost don't
have a dog in this fight, other than I don't to -- have not thought about the fact that it
needs to be landscaped if we don't want it to be just a scorched earth, that ACHD
sounds like they would put it in on their own.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
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Zaremba: What do they do if they don't landscape it? They just put river rock or
something over the top of it?
Siddoway: My understanding in talking with Caleb and Tim is that it would be rocked in
some way. It wouldn't just be dirt, but there would be rock and gravel in there. I haven't
seen any kind of a design.
De Weerd: Maybe there is an occasion that we can write a letter asking them for their
intent on this demonstration roundabout and what their plans are. They hadn't come
into any dialogue with us about that and since it is setting their standard, I don't think
they want a standard of dirt and rock, but -- and weeds.
Siddoway: I think it needs more discussion. If you want to, you know, approve the
funds so that we have it, but, then, you know, give us the direction not to spend it, I'd
take that or if you want to not approve it and have it be an amendment if needed down
the road, then, that's fine, too. But I at least wanted to let you know we were thinking
about it.
Hoaglun: Yeah. Madam Mayor, that's a good option, Steve. You know, something we
will take a look at. But we do need to have a discussion on roundabouts and
landscaping from a safety aspect. I think we all got that e-mail from a constituent who
was concerned about the big pile of dirt at the Pine one and you can't see anything and
driving through there this weekend don't know what the plans are there, but --
De Weerd: You don't want to see anything, by the way, so it is -- it is designed. It does
need some -- something out there.
Hoaglun: But from the tragedy that happened, you know, landscaping, we got to think
this through and -- on some of these major thoroughfares, how is that going to look, and
if you have pedestrian traffic and different things like that. So, just something we need
further discussion on, so thanks for the option, Steve.
Siddoway: Okay. The last one is going to be brief, because it actually can be removed.
It's 5,000 dollars requested for the Ustick-Ten Mile intersection. When that project
came up and went through construction within the last month or two we met with
Finance, we met with Public Works, it was decided, since we have no role in this as the
Parks Department with any maintenance or anything, it's really part of the Public Works
project out there with the utilities that are going in, that those funds have already been
taken care of by the Public Works project that's out there and you can remove this from
our request. Moving on, the Borup Park master plan amendment and phase one
construction documents. This is proposed to be funded through impact fees, not
through General Fund. We have been blessed to acquire additional acreage out there.
That does mean we need to update our master plan. Timing wise, you know, whether it
needs to be done this year or not is -- could be discussed, but I -- there is some urgency
to find a solution for the dog park.
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De Weerd: And I think the chief would say there is an urgency, but I'm -- I'm just
guessing that's what --
Bird: Sounds like a new place for Rountree's Bark Park.
Siddoway: You're going to hear from Chief Lavey his afternoon or tomorrow, depending
on how the timing works out, but talking about their plans for the firing range and I
understand that will impact the existing dog park, so --
De Weerd: The training facility.
Siddoway: Training facility. Thank you.
Bird: West Ada has got a nice place, a nice area to --
Siddoway: Where is that?
Bird: -- for a dog park. Western Ada has got a nice one for a Rountree Bark Park.
De Weerd: Don't let him disturb you.
Siddoway: It's all donated.
Bird: We are just jacking you around.
Siddoway: So, these funds would prepare amendment to the master plan and, then,
plan the infrastructure noted on the bottom with driveway entrances, road frontage
improvements, irrigation pump station, the pond that would be used for the entire park,
but that we would probably have to deal with any first phase and, then, look at getting
construction documents for a dog park out there as a phase one project and we would
try and do that with the funding next year. Just to the planning stage, not to the
construction stage. Number eight is something that our commissioners were before
Council last year to discuss and received a favorable response from Council and
direction to, please, move forward. That is to put the park dedication plaques in -- in all
of our parks. Rachel has been working with the commission to identify who was on City
Council, who was on the parks commission, who was into these roles at the time that
these parks were dedicated. They would be quite a bit smaller than the one you see in
in the picture, but our first one was put in Kleiner Park. They would also not include a
photo, but the intent would be to have something similar to that on a smaller scale into
the parks. We start at the biggest one at Settlers and move down through the
community parks and just keep going down as long as the -- the funds lasted. But it
would be our intent to move forward with that project that the commission has been
working on.
De Weerd: Steve, as I'm sure you will bring kind of templates back to Council, but I
think it is worth a discussion at least with Tully Park. Betty Tully did give the park at a
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reduced price and, thus, the name of it. It might have -- and I think that maybe Charlie
could speak to this, but it might be appropriate to consider at least a photo in that regard
that just -- just a topic for future discussion.
Siddoway: I would be glad to bring that forward if Council would like to see those. We
have been working on the mock up for each of the signs with the commission and they
are pretty close to final, are they not, Rachel? We could bring those forward to Council
about anytime.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Okay. Mr. Bird.
Bird: You brought up a very good point. Tully Park should have the same as -- you
know, there should be a picture involved in that one. That's the only other one I can
think of.
Siddoway: Okay.
Rountree: I agree and the investigation of who all was involved in the donations on
some of these parks might become a sensitive issue, too. So, some of us with some
history, we might want to decide who we are going to recognize and how or who we are
not going to recognize and why. Like some of these park sites have been around for 20
plus years.
Bird: Tully Park was volunteer. I mean --
Rountree: Right.
Bird: -- we had no money at all in the purchase of any of that ground or the first bunch
was given to us by the dairy show board, athletic association purchased the second 15.
The development of the two baseball fields until recently with no city money at all in
that. But Charlie is right, there is some that I could say one organization that don't want
the recognition.
Rountree: Yeah. And I think that's something that we need to have discussions about.
Siddoway: And we would welcome any insights that you have. We have been doing
quite a bit of research with the clerk's office and others. I think we have reached pretty
well clarity of what we think the accurate names are for just about all of them. The one
outstanding one is 8th Street Park has some ambiguity. It's probably the oldest one
and --
Bird: Did you get a date on that?
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Siddoway: Did we get a date, Rachel, or are we still -- yeah. We are still without an
actual date on that one, but we were able to track down dates and names for -- for the
others.
De Weerd: Well -- and I guess, Steve, that is why I raised if maybe you could bring the
draft to the Council, you know, they can bring some of their institutional knowledge as
well.
Siddoway: Will do.
De Weerd: Okay.
Siddoway: Number nine is tree grates in -- in Kleiner Park. This is -- if you have been
out there you have probably seen that there are tree grates. This is a photo of one of
them in the -- the promenade area that -- where the statue is. But the main sidewalk
going up through the active recreation complex does not have the tree grates, it has the
-- it has bark in them. The trees have been planted there at a depth that will accept the
tree grates. The tree grate frames are actually already in and we would like to pull that
-- that bark out next year and add tree grates in those areas as well if we can. My
commitment has been and will continue to be that we will work with the trust to see if --
if they can fund this, if there are remaining funds. They told me time and again that
when the dust settles and everything and they square up with CenterCal, if there is any
available funds left in the trust it will still come to us. They do have a higher priority than
this, though, on this and that's something that Gene would like to see, which is some
fountains in the ponds. So, they would fund those first with any money they have. So,
I'm currently not anticipating a lot of money and so I think we need to be proactive and
budget for it, but I will also work with the -- the trust and only spend these funds if
necessary.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I would assume that these are pretty robust, the ones I have looked at, but if
we had big events in the park and somebody drives a truck over one of these while they
are setting up their booth or not -- and I don't know if they can get broken or not, but
you're talking about buying 30 of them. Should we buy 35 and have some spares sitting
in the shop or --
Siddoway: Possibly. I mean if it got damaged in that way we would back charge the
event organizer. I think the grates themselves are pretty sturdy. It's more likely the
frame underneath that would be damaged. I'm looking back there for nods and we
fabricate those frames ourselves, so we can get that steel locally. So, I think this would
meet our needs and if that does happen, then, it has already happened with the -- with
Rib Fest, a couple of these were driven over and didn't affect the grate itself, but it did
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affect the -- the frame underneath and the event organizers will be charged for the cost
of repairing that.
Zaremba: Okay. Thanks.
Siddoway: Our last one was -- had been withdrawn. I will just mention it, because it will
likely come up in some fashion in the future. The Tully Park irrigation system is
inadequate, meaning the -- we share a pump station with the adjacent subdivisions and
we don't have the water volume or pressure that we need to really keep that up. We
end up watering during the day a lot, as we can around other activities, and we need to
-- we had -- we had this in here this year in anticipation of reclaimed water coming here,
knowing we would really have to do something with reclaimed water was coming. Now,
understand that may not happen and it's not the same urgency, so we have withdrawn
it. We do know that there is some improvements needed, but we can look at -- we still
need to look at other solutions with the irrigation district and other -- maybe just
increasing some pump sizes and things like that can help us out, but -- we will delay
this, but it is an issue we need to work on and that's all I think we need to mention for
right now. Any other -- any questions?
De Weerd: Council?
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Rountree: Somewhere in here -- whether it's this item that you have withdrawn, we
need to take a look at trying to get a handle on the irrigation system at Heritage. We
have got a lot invested in those ball fields and we are at the mercy of the school district
to either flood them or turn them into desert, but not to really get them maintained the
way they should be and I think we have talked about it a little bit and I don't know what it
would take, but probably a separate system that we could manage without having to
infringe on the rest of their facilities. So, I think that's something that I'm pretty sure
you're going to have a dialogue with the school district about it, but it's going to take
some money, Iwould --
Siddoway: Yeah. I think our rough guestimate was about 25,000 to upgrade that.
Right now we do -- we do have those -- we manage those fields. We recently put in
some drains that are functioning better than they have, but we do not control the
irrigation system and the school district does and we'd love to be able to have it on our
system and control it through Maxi-com and I think about a 25,000 upgrade out there
could do that, so I don't know if you want to make that something now or something we
would come back with once we have had that dialogue with the school district, but --
Rountree: Just keep it in mind, because that would make that a complete complex for
us to use and manage and I'm sure it's tough to manage the way it is.
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July 10, 2012
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Siddoway: It is. That's it for enhancements. I did want to go over our vehicle
replacements. We have four to propose. They are all 16 to 18 years old. A 1994 Ford
Ranger truck. Needs clutch, tires, interior is worn out. Some of these things like the
clutch, tires, on -- the one that is the most critical is the '96 Ford F-150 that needs a new
catalytic converter. It's having, you know, carbon monoxide issues and we will have to
incur some significant repair costs if we don't replace it, it would probably cost more
than the value of the truck itself. The -- all four of these vehicles -- we did -- we did
adopt the -- and use the Public Works vehicle replacement worksheets and I have
those, but we did go through these and these four vehicles all rated as critical
placements on that same ranking system and the -- I'd also point out the vehicle
replacements were anticipated in the CIP. There is about 100,000 annually -- rough
numbers -- in the CIP for replacements. I think the CIP for this year anticipated about
89,000. This was a little bit under that at 82,000 total. So, we would propose those four
vehicles for replacement this year and they would be replaced with Ford F-150 two
wheel drive vehicles. The last item replacements. It's computers. We have three up for
replacement this year. One for Rachel, one for our front counter and one that's used for
our Maxi-com system. Last couple slides, as Stacy mentioned, asked to go over CIP.
So, I'll briefly go over that in the first five years, 2013 to 2017. We broke them down by
what is funding it. The General Fund has the pathway connection in it as an annual
amount of 100,000 dollars, 500,000 total over the five years. The ACRD cost share
projects that we just went aver, the Kleiner Park projects that we just went over. The
vehicle and equipment replacements are in the CIP that we just mentioned. And the
Tully Park irrigation had been postponed, but we do have those funds there in the CIP.
Through park impact fees we are proposing to fund the tennis slash Pickleball
improvements that we just talked about. The Borup --
De Weerd: The racquet --
Siddoway: What's that?
De Weerd: The racquet --
Rountree: The racquet complex.
Hoaglun: The Rountree Racquet Complex would probably be better than a Rountree
Bark Park I suppose.
De Weerd: I think it's more appropriate for a Rountree Bark Park.
Bird: We like the bark park.
De Weerd: I'm still waiting for the bird bath park.
Siddoway: The Borup update to the master plan and the construction documents and
that's broken out between several years. And for the 77 acres that 400,000 is for well
development that we are required to do within a certain number of years or risk losing
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water rights, as well as some work on the master planning out there. But no amenity
construction out there, other than possibly the well improvements if necessary. And,
then, the Storey Park development to -- it's split between a couple of years for
construction documents and construction based on whatever comes out of the current
process and that's only our best guess without plans currently. William Watson is
development -- was developer driven, but we have it out in 2015, a couple years from
now, anticipating growth to pick back up. And, then, we in one neighborhood park as
well with us participating in that with a donation. So, the donation part, as you see, is
the 680,000 right below it, so we are -- this is -- we don't have anyone we are currently
working with, but this is just based on past experience that we have been successful at
attracting some neighborhood partnerships where the developer has been willing to give
not only the land, but some irrigation improvements and this would match that model.
And, then, the field house funds currently has 1.5 million in it for 2014. The second five
years we have some impact fees for the Borup property construction, an additional
100,000 a year for pathways. There is a million dollars anticipated for a rail to trail
project if we are successful working with the railroad, which is still underway. Land
acquisition is split between general and park impact fees. More vehicle replacements
and, then, one more neighborhood park. So, with that I will stand for any questions.
De Weerd: Any questions from Council?
Bird: I have none.
Rountree: I have none.
Hoaglun: I think we covered it.
De Weerd: Good.
Zaremba: Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Siddoway: And the staff is here for moral support and answer any questions that may
have come up, but I want fo recognize and thank them for all the hard work they do.
De Weerd: I would like to thank them as well.
Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor, I think we are almost on time exactly.
Rountree: You're ahead --
Bird: A little ahead.
Kilchenmann: So, we -- I think after lunch we will be able to do both fire and police and
finish and, then, we can do the budget setting after all the funds are done, if you desire,
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or we can do the General Fund the first thing in the morning, so that's just the Council's
decision on how they want do that, so --
De Weerd: So, are we -- we will be breaking, then, for lunch?
Kilchenmann: Yeah. Lunch is supposed to be delivered at 11:30.
De Weerd: Okay.
Kilchenmann: Oh. And Todd says it's here.
De Weerd: Okay. We may even want to see if we can just take -- Council, would you
be interested in amending the schedule a little bit, since both chiefs are here we could
probably even eat while we listen, unless what you're going to tell us makes us lose our
appetite, which could happen, you know.
Rountree: Let's take 15 minutes, then, and --
De Weerd: Yeah. Let's take 15 minutes and -- yeah. Okay. Very good. We will go
ahead and take a 15 minute break.
(Recess: 11:23 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.)
12:35 - 1:35 -Fire Department
De Weerd: Okay. I will go ahead and call this meeting back to order and turn this over
to Chief Niemeyer.
Niemeyer: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, thank you. Hopefully we have a
short presentation, we will have some time for questions. We have 22 slides. I don't
know if I beat Chief Lavey on this one or not. Just a recap of the 2012 request that we
had last year. Three division chiefs, shift commanders, also known as battalion chiefs.
It gets a little confusing, but when they are in the field that's what we call them. We
have Tyler Rountree, Ken Wilborn and Blake Hammell that got hired to fill those three
positions. Tyler is overseeing our communications division, that is a very busy position
right now as the Mayor is going to learn here next week coming up to a meeting talking
about the Ada County communications system and some failures we have had and
some things that they need to look at. Ken Wilborn with health and safety has been
focusing on our -- right now on our personal protective equipment and our fit testing to
make sure that those masks fit accurately and properly and he's also looking at our
mandatory physicals that we have that we developed two years ago and, then,
depending on how the contract plays out he will be overseeing our fitness program as
well. Blake Hammell and the quality assurance has been reviewing every fire we go on
for accuracy and to make sure that we didn't have any safety issues that came up that
we need to address. That was one of the things that with that position I was adamant
about that we are doing a full review after every call to make sure that we did it right.
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So, that's that quality assurance piece. The other item that we had on the funding is the
Brush 35 rechassis. That's been done. In fact, the day that it got done -- the very next
day I think they ran three or four brush fires out of it, so it was nice to have a full crew
inside the cab of that vehicle. It's a crew cab that matches Brush 34 and so as you can
imagine this summer they have been extremely busy. We have run more brush fire
calls -- not necessarily in our district, but certainly helping out Kuna. We were just
joking -- I shouldn't say joking, but we don't know how much of Kuna is left after the fires
that we have had out there and the brush fires that we are going on quite a bit. The old
chassis did go to PD. I guess they didn't like our paint scheme. Decided to go with a
different color and so it's being used to pull the command trailer for the police
department. So, looking at FY-13 proposed, in our base budget we did eliminate some
funding based on the fire year trend and in discussion with Finance Todd has done a
great job of laying out those trends and, then, we have our internal documents as well
that we compare against his and I think it makes for a great process to identify those
areas that we don't need the funding and we can cut those. We did have some funding
to certain line items and those focused on building maintenance. I can tell you we sent
Chief Shaul and Chief Palmer and Kenny out and we did an inspection of every station.
We now have a five year plan for maintenance identifying what's going to be coming up
over the next five years to maintain those buildings and so every year as we see those
needs and we have that plan, we can, then, put that in the budget and present it to all of
you. We also focused on our protective equipment, making sure that it is meeting IFPA
requirements and meeting our replacement program and, then, we have a few
contractual obligations with equipment and, then, the majority of our line items stayed
the same within the base budget. So, the enhancement requests, we sat down as a
staff and really focused on just the basic needs that we have and the first one that we
are going to talk about in a little bit is the fire records management system or software.
The fire station training room computers, storage cabinetry for the administrative office
and the in vehicle camera and data recorder. So, rolling into the first request it's the fire
RMS or records management software. We have had Firehouse software ever since I
got to the city and long before that. It is a clunky old database that IT has begged us to
replace at times, because they cannot function within the database. It's an old database
and the other problem that we have is that Firehouse does not allow our IT department
to have direct access to the database app. If they do they void the warranty and we
void our support and we don't feel like that's a very good way of doing business. If we
are going to have software our IT department needs to have their hands in it. And so we
sat down with IT and talked about the pitfalls that we currently have. With our current
vendor their customer service is, in my opinion, terrible. They are very hard to do
business with. We know that we need accurate data, not only for now, but in the future.
When it comes to response time, public education, inspection programs, the entire
gamut of what we do, having good data is what's going to drive better service in the
future. So, just a few of the things that we are looking at with this software and we are
thinking about doing things a little bit differently than is normally done. Normally the
way departments buy this type of software is they see it in the catalog or they go to a
vendor show and they see it and they say that will work great for us. We believe that
vendors should have to compete for our business and we do believe putting out an RFP
with exactly what we want in a software package is the best way to go. These are just a
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few of the things that as a staff and with the IT department we have talked about the
mobile applicability, the GIS integration. Our GIS team here in the city has done
tremendous work and to be able to integrate our software with that GIS is a must for us.
The CAD program is a dispatch program -- obviously housed down in dispatch. We get
that raw data and it imports into a program, whatever our RMS is, so that we can
accurately analyze response times and shoot times and turn out times, that sort of thing.
So, those are a few of the things we will have in a list and it also must be customizable
and compatible with current IT hardware and software requirements. So, if it's approved
and we get to this point our IT department will be heavily involved in reviewing those
that want to have our business. Fire station computers. This is another one that we
worked hand in hand with our IT department on. This would allow those conference
rooms at every fire station to hook up to the Internet through a computer to do video
streaming to do classroom training in a remote environment. It allows those engine
companies to stay in their district. We have talked about this a little bit. We have done
some things to purchase needed items so far. This is the finishing product of that.
What it doesn't do is it doesn't replace that hands-on training and through NFPA and
OSHA we do have certain requirements for hands-on training, but it does replace some
of that classroom training where we can do this remotely. The cost includes the
computers, the needed wiring. There is a small web cam that goes along with the
computer. In those training rooms right now, our conference rooms, it's just that, it's
bare walls and a table and some chairs. There is no connection for a computer. And
some of them -- in none of them are there computers. And so we would be purchasing
just a basic computer box for those. We have already bought the projector, so we are
ahead of schedule there. So, this request would finish that out. As far as the video
conferencing, we have worked with IT. It is somewhat dependent on line speed. Band
width if you will. And so we have a wireless system, in some stations it's really good, in
others it's a little bit sketchy, but we think that we can do some things to modify that,
talking to David and Mike, to make it work for now. Obviously, there is better ways of
doing things out there, but at a cost and I know that the city's had discussions about
fiber optic and I know that's probably a future thing that we are going to be looking at
and that would certainly enhance that, but I think we can make it work for now with the
wireless system. The admin storage office cabinets -- when we moved down to the old
planning section where we store all of our paper, our pens, our copying machines, our
laminating, all that, they actually had cubicles in there and so when we got in there there
wasn't any cabinets and so Pam and Judy did a great job of improvising. They took
cardboard boxes and cut them up and made little shelves out of tape and cardboard
and that's what currently stores our office supplies and so this request is basically to
maintain consistency with the rest of the city, to better organize things, and where we
store these is right where people walk in and they see it and so we want to make it look
a little bit better. You can see a picture here. This is the improvisation that they came
up with with folding tables and cardboard boxes. We'd like to get all that put into
cabinetry and, then, have a counter top area. We try and do as much printing, binding,
and laminating as we have in house so we don't have to outsource that and so that
countertop area would give them a place to do that. The request also includes this kind
of weird island. I talked to Pete a little bit and said why did that island ever get put
against the wall like that and he said I don't know. But we think that we can move that
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island. It's a low cost move. There is some wiring in here that Eric Jensen looked at
and we'd have to pull a little bit of wiring and some outlet boxes that are in this. We
would like to move that and just put it out front, so when folks come in they have a more
business friendly environment with a countertop that we can, then, go address them
with, it just creates a little bit better space right there where Hannah is, you can see her
smiling in my fuzzy picture. The last request is a T-eye in car video system for 500
dollars apiece. I can tell you I have been pretty passionate about this one since I came
to the city. When I worked for Ada County they bought something similar to the tune of
20,000 dollars per ambulance. It's a black box, if you will, and what it does is record G
forces, it has a camera that faces out the front is what Ada County had. The one I'm
proposing faces out the front and into the cab. As a field supervisor I investigated five
ambulance accidents that we were involved in and every time when I had ISP showed
up they did our investigations, Ipulled alittle chip out of the camera, I gave it to them,
and they watched it on a laptop and they went and cited the driver who said we pulled
out in front of them. So, it's a -- for them it was a high cost liability coverage, for us it's a
very low cost. T-eye is a company that makes these -- they are 500 dollars apiece.
They are just a small unit. They record all the same type of information that the county
has when I was there. I think if we are ever in a wreck this will prove invaluable. I know
that -- I think I mentioned to Councilman Bird last night, the other incident that Ada
County had and Dan Wiebold had with this -- there is an ambulance out at Wiebold
getting repaired and they were out on a county road doing about 60 miles an hour, the
speed limit, or 55, the speed limit, and a woman pulled out in front of them and they
broadsided her and injured her pretty badly. The lawyers for the woman tried to claim
that the ambulance pulled out in front of her and they were able to capture that on video
and that was pretty shocking video to see in slow motion, but it did absolve the county
and Dan Wiebold of any liability, because they were able to proof that that wasn't the
case. So, these are 500 dollars apiece. We would put them in all of those front line
engines and our command vehicles. It does record both inside and outside the vehicle.
It records G force speed, route, and it's the best defense if we get in a wreck. This
gives you an idea of what the interface looks like, so when you download that
information right from these little web cams, essentially, is what they are, you can see
the outside view going forward, you can see the inside view of the cab, you can see the
speedometer and the direction of travel on the left. You can see the G forces in a graph
to the lower right. You can open up Google Maps, it will show you exactly what route
that vehicle took and, then, you can save it in any kind of file type you want. The other
nice thing is there is a little push button, when you push that button it will record the
event until you push it again. So, the other benefit to this is a side benefit. From a
quality assurance standpoint is as our engines and our command officers roll up on
scene they push the button and it records everything out the front windshield, so you get
multiple angles of a fire when you go to do a quality assurance review. So, there is a
side benefit to it. Our primary request for this is just from a liability standpoint and to
have that coverage from that liability. So, on our replacements, the G100, the breathing
air compressor is at Station One. This unit is about 12 years old. We had it inspected
about seven months ago and the tune to repair that would be about 20,000 dollars and
we felt like that wasn't a very good investment, as opposed to replacing it. If we did the
repair there is no guarantee how much longer that would last. This is the air
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compressor that we use to fill our breathing apparatus bottles. So, there was a
recommendation for replacement on that. We also have some worn carpet at Station
One and at Station Four. The one at Station Four is in the weight room where the
carpet is torn up. We are going to replace that with rubber mats. That makes the most
sense to have in the weight room, as opposed to carpet. Carpet in a weight room and a
workout room doesn't really make sense. The other item that I apologize I did not get
put on here is the replacement of the training room tables and chairs at Station One.
This is also where our EOC is. We have plastic tables in there right now that screws --
they have just been used up, the screws are falling out and the chairs are not only
stained, but they are also falling apart as well. We have -- just so you know on that, we
have put in two grant requests to get those replaced through grants and have been
denied both times, so we have tried to find alternate funding for those tables and chairs
at Station One. And, then, update to the CIP, we do have an impact fee reimbursement
to the rural district for Station Five for 600,000 dollars. This will not pay that completely
the station, but it does get them paid back in part. The air compressor that we just
discussed was moved up one year due to its condition in the CIP. It was actually
scheduled for 2014. For 2013 we did have cardiac monitor replacements scheduled in
the CIP. We have asked to have that moved down to 2014. The reason for that is that
there is a lot of work being done right now on EMS joint powers agreement among all
the agencies and the county and based on the outcome of that the whole system could
change to a different cardiac monitor, so we didn't feel like spending the money now
made a whole lot of sense when things may change in the future -- in the near future.
We do have annual maintenance done on those cardiac monitors, so there is no safety
or health hazard by holding off one year on that. And, then, lastly, we did have an
engine scheduled for 2013. We moved that down to 2014 based upon the replacement
matrix. We, too, stole Public Works matrix and, then, modified it to fit a fire engine, but
it was a great layout of how to replace an apparatus. If you look at the CIP in the past it
was just based on years of service that the engine was in service and we feel we need
to look at miles, hours, condition, repair costs on that apparatus as well and so we did
feel like we could move that down to 2014. With that I would take any questions and I
did that just for Jeff, because I know he's next. It seems that there was a picture in his
presentation last year, so I told him I don't get mad, I just get even.
De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I guess I would put this in the category of a curiosity, but it -- it's piqued by
the records management system. When you respond to something do you have any
remote capability to have some -- something come up on a screen that says when our
guys inspected this building -- we are responding to a commercial building and when
our guys inspected this six months ago and they found these kind of chemicals in there,
so -- so that today when I'm actually responding to a fire I know what I'm likely to walk
into? Do we have any capability of remote --
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Niemeyer: Not yet.
Zaremba: -- records like that?
Niemeyer: I would say that that possibility is coming and it's coming fast. Certainly the
-- the information that we are able to capture in our own records management system is
vital to that, to look at the inspections or the previous incidents and, then, you have to
tie that with a program down in the Ada County dispatch center called CAD, Computer-
Aided Dispatch, where it houses some of that information as well. The CAD program
that we currently use countywide is even older than our RMS here in the city. They
have put that out and they are doing demos and -- I don't want to say too much,
because I'm not exactly sure where it's at in the process. I know that they are not happy
with the current CAD vendor and are looking for something else. They would, then, be
able to integrate that type of information, so on the MVGs that are in the vehicles, which
is what you're talking about, where do you get that information. You would be able to
have that premise information pop up to say there is a big Doberman in the backyard,
don't walk through the gate or we have had chemicals stored illegally in this area. So,
that is coming. I think it takes the right programs to make that happen and I know that
between the county and what we are doing here we should be able to get there.
Zaremba: Cool. Thank you.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor. Chief. On the T-eye system -- I think that's a very good thing
to have. I was just kind of curious from and operational standpoint if -- if you roll up on a
scene and they press manual record and they are recording it, if it's on a disk it's limited
storage and, then, if they are driving back and something happens is there internal
memory that will record that or how does that work?
Niemeyer Yeah. See, typically get an eight gigabyte -- it's stored on an SD card, which
eight gigs will hold quite a bit. What it does is if you manually push that it will lock the
event and so there is no chance of overriding that or erasing it. If you don't push the
manual it's basically just a continuous record and so when an event happens it triggers,
it locks it, otherwise it's just recording over itself all the time and so there is a great way
of -- I did get one as a demo and I played with it about three years ago and it does a lot
of recording. You can put a lot of information on that little SD card.
Hoaglun: Okay. Great.
De Weerd: Any other questions from Council? Okay.
Police ®epartment
Lavey: I wasn't paying attention.
De Weerd: I saw you looking.
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Lavey: Well, I noticed an error in my PowerPoint. I took a picture of the building from a
different presentation and, then, I didn't change the date of FY-09. I have my
PowerPoint on my iPad, if we could just figure -- if IT could figure out how I could get it
onto the projector we would be doing just fine. Madam Mayor and Council, for the
record, I have 16 slides and if we are going to delete that one I have 15 slides. So, we
should be able to beat fire a little bit. I, too, want to the take our success of the last
couple of -- or this last year and -- a couple of years and really go to the men and
women of the police department. I'm just a conduit, but they are the ones that actually
do the job and I'm here to say today thank you for the service that they provide and if we
haven't provided the service that is expected of us, then, it all rests on me. When I
came to Meridian in 1997 there was 31,000 people, 34 police officers -- I was number
34. Today we have a population near 80,000 and we have 87 police officers. We have
24 support personnel, four part-time employees and -- which is a total of about 115
employees. That has made a significant impact upon the General Fund and we are
aware of that. We are currently broke down into four major departments.
Administration, patrol, criminal investigations, and community services. I'm going to go
right to the vehicle replacement this year. We had seven that we were looking at
replacing and we, too, went and looked at our cars and said, you know what, we can do
some reorganizing and take some of our older cars and convert them into K-9 cars,
which are issued cars, and maybe get a few more years of service out of them. So, you
will see four cars -- the first four cars in front of you are actual marked police cars. They
are all right around 100,000 -- close to 100,000, except for the bottom one, but I will tell
you that these figures are six months old -- or not quite six months old and we estimate
that the mileage will be between 100 and 115 thousand for each vehicle. The fifth
vehicle down there has very low miles considering the year of the car, but it has been
wrecked three times. None of them our fault. It was ran over by a semi in an
intersection. It was rear-ended. And just recently it was back into from a parking stall
while they were doing surveillance. It has many mechanical and electrical problems as
well. I honestly do not believe that it's going to last much longer, but if we need to try
we will try. And, then, the SUV there, we were proposing to replace that with a sedan.
Enhancement number one. We are in a digital age where almost every single person
carries a cell phone, a smart phone, oftentimes that's their only phone. You will find that
the ratio of wireless phones versus wired phones in Ada County -- the wireless phones
win every time. Unfortunately, a lot of criminal activity occurs or is captured on these
cell phones and we cannot search those phones unless we have permission or a search
warrant, but when we finally get to that point where we are going to get that information
off there, have to send it to a special forensics analysis as a state police and oftentimes
takes months and months. Well, we can make that a little higher priority and do it in-
house. We have the expertise, we just don't have the equipment. So, your first
enhancement is going to have a cell phone, smart phone, forensic kit and there is a
one-time fee and, then, there is an annual cost. I'll cover all the amounts at the end of
the presentation. Enhancement number two really kind of goes in the logic of the digital
age that we are in. A lot of the transmissions that we do now with -- within the police
department is smart phone, e-mails, not -- or Twits or whatever the fire chief called it,
but you would have that ability to do that if you had a smart phone. And, then, the
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transferring of text messages and photos. We currently have our investigators on a
standard basic cell phone and for every text or picture that they transmit it's costing us
25 cents. We have explored giving them the ability to have a smart phone, so they can
keep in contact with their cases, with their e-mails, and, then, the service that we
currently have would include free the text messages and the pictures. So, this
enhancement is going to involve purchasing of the phones and, then, the increased
phone service for our detectives, not the entire department. Enhancement number
three is a recommendation upon city IT. Our current police security system, which is
our proximity cards or prox system is end of life. We have -- it's nonsupported. It is not
functioning like it's supposed to. I guess it would be fair to say that IT has kept it
together by duct tape and baling wire and they said that it's time for a replacement. I
asked them if we could get by another year and it was kind of -- their answer was
perhaps. The security system that is proposed for replacement is the same system as
City Hall, so what we had talked about was having a potential to have a redundant
system between City Hall and the police department. It would be separated through
firewall, but if one system ever went down the other system could be used to keep us
going. So, that is our proposal for our security system. This -- you know, I debated on
whether we should put this in or not. As I said before, we had seven cars for
replacement. Well, it's kind of smoke and mirrors a little bit, because I added two new
cars to the fleet. One of the biggest problems that we have faced recently is for full staff
and that's good news, but there is not enough cars to go around and we get by, we
team up, we put two people to a car until the other shifts go home or if there is vacation
days or sick days and there is availability, but where it becomes critical is on the
emergency events. The event at Pine and Meridian involving a standoff that took
multiple hours, we had to call in additional teams to come in and cover the road. They
had no cars. Anytime we get busy in the field and we need to call additional people in
they have no cars. So, it really doesn't make sense for me to call people in if they just
come into the station. And so we -- every time we have a situation we have to free up a
couple of cars from intersections and so we have people that can cover calls. So, I am
requesting two additional patrol cars. I asked our patrol lieutenants if we could get by
without them and they said we will make anything work. But, you know, it's one of those
things we will continue to do as is. It's not as efficient as it should be. And, then, I also
talked to Council liaison we -- we always had a plan to put additional cars in place as we
added officers, but we didn't add the additional cars when we added all of the grant
officers and so that's what's creating part of our situation. Enhancement number five I
did not include originally and Finance asked me -- they called me up and asked me why
not and I told them, you know, timing, wasn't sure it was right, but they said that we
would never get off the ground if we didn't include it. So, I'll just briefly touch on the fact
that what we are doing here is allocating some of the General Fund monies toward the
project. Currently we have some monies in the public safety fund and I will cover those
in a minute and this would be additional monies on top of that. Those are my -- my
enhancements until a couple other things came up and as you recall me mentioning in
the earlier presentation, I talked about the volunteer program and our volunteer
coordinator for the police department is a part-time employee, but she handles about 70
volunteers. We are looking at adding two more functions to her position. One is
providing the volunteers for the City Hall kiosk, excuse me, and the other is I have been
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working closely with Steve Siddoway and the parks department on adding volunteer
parks patrol starting at Kleiner Park and, then, moving into the future into some of our
other parks based upon the concept that Boise has down at the -- along the greenbelt.
Well, in order for me to do that we are going to probably be about 200, 250 volunteers
and apart-time employee is not going to cut it. But instead of adding apart-time
employee here and apart-time employee at the parks and apart-time employee at the
city, we decided to take our current position, increase it to full time and, then, share
those responsibilities three ways. One of the other things that we have added in this
enhancement is clothing our volunteers. Currently the plan is to just get some vests
that are large enough to wear over any sort of outer clothing, but as this evolves, as we
get more people, we may want to issue something instead of just having a few things
that people wear. And, then, the third thing that we added was a mode of transportation
around the park.
De Weerd: Is that like a donkey?
Lavey: You know -- yes. It's probably just not quite as stubborn.
Bird: It depends on whether it starts or not.
Lavey: I didn't put -- I didn't suggest mule, but I mean they have all sorts of things out
there. Mules, Polaris, the Raiders and I don't know what else they are called. But the
Parks department uses mules. But I put that in there as you know what we are talking
about. Some sort of utility carts out there to have our volunteers go from place to place.
Bird: A golf cart is cheaper.
Lavey: The last request -- we really touched into a little bit about this with the fire
department when they were talking about their CAD system and their interface and
everything else. And this really kind of has to do with a separate situation, similar facts,
and as we have it right now, we have a countywide RMS system, which is a records
management system. It is separate from fire. This is a law enforcement records
management system and Ada County, Boise, and Meridian all use that and we are all
connected into each other and we can see each other's information and everything else.
Well, we wrote our incident tracker system, which is our report writing system and you
will see that is ITS for the police department, Mike Tanner and Jamie Leslie have been
recognized for it for their hard work on this. It really involves into a -- from arecords --
from amanagement system that stores just audio and digital photos into a report writing
system, case management system -- it does a whole bunch of things. And it does
things so well that Boise and Ada County wanted it as well and we have shared that.
So, not only are we now sharing a records management system, but we are sharing a
report writing system. Well, the two don't talk to each other and so you have to go in
and put in information in one and, then, you have to go to another system and put in
information in another system and, then, you have to go to CAD and -- which is a third
system. Well, interface is what allows these systems to talk. The only problem is is that
they are proprietary and -- which means that they can ask for more money for them to
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write the program to make the two talk. So, the quote for the interface between RMS
and our field report writing system is 86,000 and some change. This proposal is to split
that -- that cost three ways, that would allow our records system and our reporting
writing system to talk to each other and so, basically, what's going to happen so when
the officer puts all that information in the report writing system when records goes into
do the data entry all the information is going to be there and they just have to add in the
new stuff that comes in. We have an e-ticketing, which is electronic ticketing program
that is getting ready to go online. If you recall I believe in front of you last year we got a
grant to pay for all the hardware equipment. Mike Tanner once again did phenomenal
work and wrote the software program that allows this e-ticketing system talk with our
report writing system. He's able to do that because we wrote both systems, nothing
proprietary, but because of his work we don't have to go to a third-party vendor to go in
and run the system for us. So, we are getting ahead of the game, but we still have
other vendors out there that we have to work with and it's costing us some money. The
other thing is as you heard deputy -- or you heard Chief Niemeyer talk about the county
CAD system, they are currently in a RFP process to get a new CAD vendor. We have
some problems with our contract that we -- our current vendor we actually had a
contract to upgrade and, then, they weren't able to deliver on that contract and so we
had to back out, but that contract would have paid for an interface from CAD to our
report writing system and they can use the ECS funds -- emergency communication
fund for that. And so that would be the current proposal for the new CAD is that ECS
funds will pay for that interface and, then, we would already have covered the interface
for our system and so, essentially, what you're going to do is you're going to have what
-- if you call 911 and you give that dispatcher information, everything that he or she
types into that computer automatically is forwarded from CAD to the reporting system
into the record system that all the interfaces interchange. So, about two or three
Councils ago on the Consent Agenda was the contract that has the agreement sharing
a third of those costs. These are the numbers. The very top number, 200,779 dollars
covers all the enhancements I talked today, with the exception of the training center.
The training center I will come to last. But the smart phone upgrades, 5,720, which
would cover a one time cost and annual cost. The 25,300 covers one time costs and
there is no ongoing costs. The ongoing costs that we would have would just be in-
house salaries with IT. Eighty thousand dollars would cover the two additional fleet
cars. $49,659 covers half-time wages -- additional half-time wages, benefits, clothing
costs, the mule or donkey, whatever you want to refer to it as and fuel costs. And, then,
the interface that we talked about is $28,600, which is a third of the cost. And, then, the
-- jumping back up to the training center, two million dollars -- let me just highlight how
we come up with that figure. First of all, I was trying to be as conservative as possible.
If you recall in some of the earliest presentations an estimated cost was 5.8 million
dollars for a facility and I think all of us thought that that was painful and after dealing
with local consultants and construction here, they said that that figure was at least a
million dollars too high with the current market. And so that would get us down to -- and
this -- this is with a conceptual plan. This isn't something that we designed, so -- and
that could always change. But with the conceptual plan we were hoping to get that
down to about 4.8 million with -- with the thoughts that we were a million over, but, then,
there was also some thoughts that some of the ground preparations and everything else
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were estimated extremely high and so we were really hopeful to get it down to about 4.5
million and that's where we come into the two million dollar figure is I was under the
understanding at one time that we had 2.5 million dollars in the public safety fund and
so I was taking that 2.5 million dollars, I come up with this additional two million dollars
to equate to 4.5. Well, I was wrong and the true figure is closer to two million dollars in
the public safety fund and so this is just additional dollars that would be put away toward
the project. Now, I believe that the project is -- is fully funded using the fund balance,
but this is just taking some of the current revenue that we would be getting in and
putting it toward this project. Am I wrong?
Kilchenmann: Well, it's from existing General Fund balance going toward the project.
So, it's -- in the CIP that's how we planned it, so it's okay.
Lavey: As long as somebody knows.
Kilchenmann: It's okay.
Lavey: Taking all -- this, again, excludes the training center, but taking all of the capital
replacements and -- or no. Excuse me. This is capital replacements. Taking all the
capital replacements -- this includes all the vehicles that were in the CIP, all of the IT
computer replacements, completely recommended by IT, two replacements for a printer
and a plotter, the -- and I separated these out, because we have done it that way in the
past, but the vehicle NDP the computer is in the cars, in the past we have had them
separated, but for the last couple of years we have had IT do everything, so you have
an additional recommendation for IT to replace computers that have been in these cars
for years, so that's why this says vehicle NDPs, 243,500 for that and that is the end of
my presentation. I will answer any questions on anything we talked about or anything
else that I touched upon that you may be curious about.
De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Again, this is more of a curiosity than anything else. Is there any guideline of
a balance between patrol cars and motorcycles and bicycles and -- how do you make
the choice of which of those that you get? Is it voluntary on the part of the officer or --
Lavey: Well, first of all, I believe that your community dictates that. It's the expectations
from the community and that what we decide to provide to the community. I think the --
the common thing is now is that you become a police officer, you ride in a car and, then,
you start looking at what is your community expecting and what can we do beyond the
basic police service to get to our community and so we have moved into motorcycles
and I will tell you I kind of questioned whether we should have motorcycles, but there is
a specific duty that they can do that a patrol car cannot do and so if we have -- if we
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have the staffing and can go out there and use the motorcycles, they are very effective
in traffic enforcement, but you can't transport prisoners, you can't transport property or
anything else and so it's kind of a give and take. You don't want to have too many
motorcycles and, then, not -- and, then, to have one person that has a car doing all the
work. Likewise on you -- it's great, you get a lot of good things for it, but you give up a
lot of things, too. It's kind of give and take. And so over the years we have actually
used the bicycles as a seasonal thing and we get phenomenal reviews and comments
when they work during the summer sessions. So much so that we let the community
drive us to the point of we have two full-time bicycles now. Full time in that they are on
the bikes every single day for about ten months out of the year. I actually have to tell
them to put their bikes away, because it's too slippery out there. It's likewise with the
motorcycles. So, it really -- it's a balance thing. Administration needs to make that
decision about, okay, how -- how efficient and effective are we out there. Are we -- we
have all things, but, then, we always send them one or two cars to go cover for them all
the time. Administration has to look at that balance and, then, the community it takes
the reset.
Zaremba: Great. Thanks.
De Weerd: Other questions?
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Just a quick question on the animal maintenance jumped up a thousand
dollars for the building. I was just kind of curious about that. I mean it's only a 3,500
dollar increase overall. The bulk of that's Intermountain Gas and there has been some
reductions elsewhere. Are we just trying to hold that thing together or what's -- what's
the --
Lavey: The animal shelter?
Hoaglun: The animal shelter, yes.
Lavey: That's a future topic that we probably don't want to discuss today. Yes, we are
trying to piece that all together. I will -- I will share with you a little bit about that. IHS is,
again, exploring expansion and potentially building a building closer to Meridian or in
Meridian. But that is depending upon finding a suitable place that they can afford and a
lot of community donations. So, that could happen in two years. That could happen in
ten years. But it doesn't make sense, in my opinion, for Meridian to build a new animal
shelter if there is going to be an animal shelter in or near Meridian. So, the Mayor and I,
my staff, and our volunteers have been trying to figure out what's the best thing to do.
One of the driving forces on top of that is that Public Works that -- our space that we are
using in their future plans to house use it as a parking lot and, then, use it as expansion
toward the laboratories or some other things. So, we, too, are like the parks in that
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parks is trying to scramble and do something about the dog park, we are trying to do
something about the animal shelter. I have been in discussions with Dr. Rosenthal at
IHS, he tells me that they can currently handle all of Meridian's dogs at their current
facility. So, then, it comes down to how much is that going to cost and he is supposed
to be getting me those figures within the next six months. So, I would anticipate coming
in front of Council next year with some sort of plan on what we are going to do. One of
the things I said in the past was that I didn't really want to send Meridian residents down
there to retrieve their dogs, but you really have to decide what's -- what's in the best
interest for this city, what's in the best interest for those dogs, what's in the best interest
for our citizens and if they do have a last dog they go to one place to retrieve it. I would
hope that long term that that facility is closer to Meridian to make it more convenient, in
the short term we are just going to have to decide what are we going to do. And one of
the other things that I said to Council in the past is that we have about 70 volunteers
that put in 14,000 plus hours a year. Those are equivalent to about seven full-time
employees that we do not fund. That good will may go away and that good will is
starting to go away. We have just lost a lot of volunteers. We have lost some of our top
volunteers and, you know, I don't know if they are just getting burned out because they
have been doing it so long or if they are fearing that we are going to go do something
else and they are just leaving or what. I mean it's probably a whole bunch of those
things. And so we have been doing a mad scramble on Facebook asking for
volunteers, but on the city Facebook page and ours to keep us going above water. If it
gets that drastic I may have to come in front of Council earlier and say what are we
going to do. So, those are the plans right now as we are trying to work on some sort of
partnership with IHS. I think it makes the most sense, but I have to equate that with
how much we are currently paying versus how much they want. My guess is is that
their contract is going to be higher than our current city budget, but when you add in all
of the free hours that we are getting, I think we are -- it's going to be cheaper to
outsource. So, that's kind of a long answer to your question, but perhaps it gives you
enough insight to know where we are standing.
Hoaglun: That's good. Thank you, chief.
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor, I was just going to comment that we had a tour of the Public
Works facilities the other day and one of the places that we looked at we were standing
there watching RVs use the dump and, of course, it's right next to the animal shelter.
My suggestion was since we allow people to use that RV dump free, we shouldn't
charge them, but we should require that when they leave they take one dog with them.
Lavey: That's a good suggestion.
Bird: I don't like that idea. I use the dump.
Lavey: Yeah.
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De Weerd: Or at least take a dog on a walk.
Lavey: I got a couple of thoughts I didn't want to put on record.
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Madam Mayor, thank you. Jeff, this is not a question or a comment about
your presentation, but yours and Mark's have made me go crazy and I'm not sure I can
get out my thoughts in this short a period of time, but I hear the RMF system is old and
cranky and not supported and I hear about, well, we want to take the system we created
in terms of reporting and whatnot, make it compatible with some other proprietary
system, which is -- needs to be compatible with another propriety system and that the
CAD system at the county isn't working and I see us jumping into this -- and for the lack
of a better analogy that vortex in the bath tub -- that vortex instead of the water it's
money and cost, not that I'm opposed to the money and cost, but I have been caught up
in that vortex in seeing hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to make technology do
things that technology really can't ultimately do and go out the window. I'm concerned
that we are just -- we are just starting to get our feet wet in there and I won't want to see
us going down the drain and getting contracts for this and getting a system for that and
expecting it all to work, because, quite honestly, I don't think it will. I haven't seen one
yet that does for the amount of money people project that it's going to cost. It's always
way more expensive and it's always way more frustrating and it almost never does
ultimately what you wanted it to do in the place. So, I don't know what you have done
with your IT committees and whatnot, I just am getting real comfortable with trying to
make all of these fixes and anticipating it's going to make your job better, as opposed to
making it more frustrating and more expensive.
Lavey: Madam Mayor and Councilman Rountree, I totally understand where you're
coming from and totally agree with you and I will share with you a few additional things
that may help ease your mind slightly, but not completely, because it doesn't ease my
mind completely -- is I had those same thoughts and frustrations and we have just put
together a major undertaking of a meeting that happens this Friday with elected
officials --
De Weerd: Just wait until you hear that.
Lavey: Yeah. Elected Officials, department heads, and staff to have and ask those
exact questions. What the heck are we doing. Where is our money going. We are
trying to put -- and what's the analogy that a round peg in a square hole or, you know, a
square peg in a round hole and we need to work together, we need to figure out what's
going and we need to invest our money wisely. And that meeting is 1:30 on Friday. To
ease your mind slightly is that our records management system for law enforcement is
brand new. We just upgraded. And so I would not anticipate us doing anything
differently for some time. We are pretty stable, except that we -- they don't talk to each
other and that's okay if you want to go in and do work three different times and we are
just trying to be more efficient. Our problem that we run into is -- really comes down to
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control, is county controls that, we don't, and so we have to either accept what they do
or try to do it a little bit differently and if we do it a little bit differently than it costs money
you know the rest. There is the vortex. So, we understand there is a problem. We are
trying to fix that problem. I don't have great confidence that major things will happen
until maybe the first of the year, but we are going to try.
De Weerd: I guess you can say, though, that the programs that -- well, the program that
this is trying to connect has been a really positive change for the police department and
for Ada County as a whole. It's now just adding the additional benefits of connecting it
to additional systems. So, if you hold that in isolation that software that's been
developed and now shared has been a major enhancement to -- to our PD.
Lavey: Madam Mayor, that is true. The -- I'll give you some more insight. I told you
that we just upgraded to a new records management system. Well, in that upgrade we
requested a quote for a programing system. It came back at 875,000 dollars for that
module. Well, that's a lot of money and our ITS system not only does that, but it does
so much more. So, it's kind of one of those things. We have saved ourselves 875,000
dollars, plus all the additional monies that we would have had to pay out for all these
other vendors by doing it all ourselves and now we just need to invest 86,000 to put
those two entities together. So, yeah, it's one of those things that it's -- it's still
frustrating that we have all these different vendors. Frankly, I would like to do it all
ourselves, but the risk of that is -- if Mike leaves us, then, we are stuck there. You
know, that's one thing that the third-party vendors will tell you is like, okay, well, all the
R&D that we do and all the engineering we do, we spread the cost out between all of
the customers and when you do it yourself there is not as much R&D and you -- you
have the entire bill and, then, if that person leaves, then, you're in trouble. Ada County
has faced that in the past where they have actually done a lot of customization to their
programs and, then, their programmers retired or left and so I'm really cautious about
doing it ourselves, but when you go to that third party vendor, then, you open it up to the
RFP process and, then, you go to lowest fares. So, I mean it's all those things. Trying
to come up with the best solution I think starts with EMS, fire, law enforcement, and
electives strategically working together as partners on where to take us -- excuse me --
instead of, well, we want to do this and we want to do this and we want to do this and
that -- we have done that too much.
Rountree: That's about as hard as getting systems compatible.
Lavey: Yes, it is. But you at least have to try.
Rountree: Yeah. I agree.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
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Zaremba: I just want to comment in support of the finding a way to make the -- what are
currently separate data repositories somehow communicate with each other, Ijust --
from what I know about what my wife does for work, one of the biggest problems
companies and organizations have is the rekeying of supposedly the same data into
different databases and people approach that as, okay, it's a time issue, why should
somebody have to do the same thing three times. But it's also an errors issue. You get
errors the more you copy something or have to repeat entering it and you end up with
different information in the different silos and being able to get them to communicate
with each other, enter it once and, then, distribute it where ever it needs to be
distributed to, you cut down on the errors considerably and that's a good thing.
Lavey: That is true.
De Weerd: Okay. I have a question for Stacy, going back to our CIP that we are trying
to stay true to it and setting money aside to stay on track to the expenditures. So, can
you explain again the training center and the two million dollars now adds to the set
aside for the public safety fund? Is that correct? So, what does that total?
Kilchenmann: So, initially it was not 9.8 million. So, initially when we worked on this we
put -- we had 3.8 million in donations and, then, we had the two million in the public
safety fund and the remainder use of fund balance. So, then, when we -- and Jeff was
like that's just too much, I'm not going to -- because I said where is your enhancement,
because we agreed that we would follow '13 and he said, well, I'm not going to put it.
So, the reason tactually -- yes, it was me that told him to go put in, because it seemed
to be a priority and we are going to do it, so we need to put it on the table, so --
Lavey: Can we mark that on the record?
Kilchenmann: It is on record. So, we, then -- he -- I'm not going to spend 9.8 million
dollars on it. So, we reduced the amount we are taking from fund balance with -- which
is this -- and made it this 2.2 million dollars. I'm not positive how much the training
center is going to be. So, we will have this from the General Fund and we will have the
two million from the public safety fund, which is just sitting there by itself. So, it's -- this
is approved, so we have four million toward the training center.
De Weerd: Okay.
Kilchenmann: Does that make sense? Does that answer your question?
De Weerd: Yes, it does.
Kilchenmann: Okay.
De Weerd: And I think, chief, at some point -- and you might give a little brief summary
on who you're talking to in terms of -- of any potential partners to this, but -- and maybe
give a little idea of where we are at.
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Lavey: Madam Mayor, Council, let me answer that and a couple more things just to
kind of refresh your memory.
De Weerd: Will you answer it more directly than what you just did with the --
Lavey: Shorter?
De Weerd: I'm sorry.
Lavey: Well, let me go back --
De Weerd: That was a painful discussion.
Lavey: Well, let me go back to -- did I side step around it or did you get some sort of
answer, because -- let me say that the 9.8 million dollars was the figure for a phase one
and phase two and that was through the -- the county survey that we did about potential
partners that would come forward and the use that they would have. So, the desire
from everybody that came forward was put in -- into size and numbers and that came
out to 9.8 million dollars. Well, nobody wanted to pay any money to have a facility like
that, so I said that is crazy. So, the 3.8 million dollars was for phase two portion that
would be necessary for a regional concept that nobody wanted to come forward on and
so I asked Stacy to put it in there as donated money, so if somebody came forward and
said we really like that idea, let's proceed, I would say bring the money and we will
proceed. Phase one takes us down into what Meridian needs now, what Meridian
needs in the future, and it incorporated both police and fire and the rest of the city as
well. It would be open to everybody. The one aspect of the training center is the firing
range and police are the ones that would have a need for that, but, more importantly, it
would also have training rooms and the village that would be open to other agencies.
Now, I feel like I'm going down the road in circles again on the question that you asked
me, so the current plan was to meet with the state as far as partnerships and -- and I
have done that individually. I have went in front of both Council and in front of ISP and
pitched our ideas to the point where they want to be in partnership with us, they want to
purchase some land that connects our land to their driving track and they also want to
purchase seven additional lots that go along Water Tower for future expansion to not
only the police academy, but to the state police as well. The state police is looking at
expanding their laboratory and would look for a place. So, that would be also looking at
adding a dormitory. Well, in discussions with them is if we were to proceed with our
project they would leave the first lot that borders our property along Water Tower open,
so we could build and partner and expand our scenario village. The hopes is that those
would be through community -- a lot of community donations, BSU, property -- or
property construction and architecture and those sort of things, but we have also had a
few business -- businesses in town that have expressed interest in maybe helping build
a mock facility there as well. So, that would be donations. Next to our property would,
then, would be a dormitory and they would open that dormitory up for our use as well,
so if we are having some sort of sponsored training there at the -- at our training center,
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that people coming would have a cheap place to stay if they so desired. Now, we were
-- we had a meeting scheduled last week and that cancelled, so there is a meeting
coming up first part of August with the Police Department, Economic Development, the
Mayor's Office, Department of Commerce -- and I believe those are the only players
involved -- to discuss future plans as well. Internally the Police Department's next steps
plans are to meet with our Council liaison and the Mayor to explain where we are at,
potential partners, and an RFP process with a weighted scoring for partnerships. We
have -- you're aware, Mayor, that we have tried to get a lot of partners involved in this
and there is a lot of people that want to be involved, but they don't want to bring dollars
to it. We have also met with another Treasure Valley business that would like to be
partners with us, but the partnership that they are going to potentially bring forward is
going to come out of an RFP process. They are unwilling to commit dollars ahead of
time. And, then, the partnership with the state equates to about 1.3 million dollars, but
we are working together, yet individually. I mean they are going forward on their stuff.
If we were to go forward on ours it would be great if we can get together and work
together, but right now they haven't committed to saying, well, we will give X number of
dollars for here or X number of dollars for there. So, it is a partnership, but it helps us in
future expansion and need, but not necessarily for that initial groundbreaking if we
decide to go forward. Hopefully that wasn't in too many circles.
De Weerd: It's easier to follow than the software.
Lavey: I can go back and talk about with IT. The IT guy's not here.
De Weerd: He got frustrated and left. Okay. Council, any further questions?
Bird: I have none.
De Weerd: Stump the chief type of thing.
Lavey: I'm game for that.
De Weerd: I guess he's trying to stump us. Okay.
Lavey: Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you. Okay. I think we are at the end of General Fund and
Community Services or the Community Development Fund and so, Council, why don't
we take a ten minute break and, then, we will reconvene for discussion.
(Recess: 12:55 p.m. to 1:15 p.m.)
1:35 - 2:30 -Council budget decisions and discussion
De Weerd: Okay. I will reconvene our budget workshop and I guess, Stacy, what
would you like to do? Kind of walk through this section by section?
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Kilchenmann: Yes. I think probably what we should do is -- a couple things that -- we
will pick this up in Todd's presentation, but the Community Development that -- under
overbudgets -- or it's actually overbudget 172,000 will be absorbed by the General
Fund, so we can either just start at the beginning of Community Development, there is
not much in there, and just go through there and, then, just walk our way down the
General Fund probably be the easiest.
De Weerd: Okay. Council, are you good with that?
Rountree: Yeah.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I have a question whether there might be two subjects that we need to
discuss first. All of these based on the decision of whether or not we are going to do the
three percent allowable increase and whether or not we are going to do the personnel
merit increase of one percent. That affects everything we are going to talk about. I
wonder if we should talk about those first.
Kilchenmann: Good point.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Stace, can you tell me what the one percent in the General Fund, what the
amount is giving the one percent raise?
Kilchenmann: I will have Todd answer that one, but, Councilman Zaremba, you're right,
those are two -- well, especially the three percent. That's kind of an essential principle.
De Weerd: So, as we wait for the one percent perhaps, Council, you want to have a
discussion on the three percent?
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I would express an opinion that I asked Stacy for a rough estimate of what
difference that would make, for instance, to a property owner whose home was valued
at 200,000 and they had the homeowner's exemption and rough guess is that the
difference to the homeowner between doing the three percent raise or not doing the
three percent raise is about 15 dollars over the entire year. Then you also -- excuse
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me. Either one of those -- either without the three percent or with the three percent are
still lower than the levy rate that we had for 2011, because of the citywide increase in
numbers of properties and property values, so my personal opinion is it would be
supportable to take the three percent increase this time.
Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor, too, if I could -- the three percent equates to 580,000
dollars. So, divide that by three each percent is worth, whatever that is divided by three.
Just to give you an idea of how much money we are talking about overall between
taking and not taking the three percent.
De Weerd: Council, I guess I could add some of the discussion by the directors as we
looked at each -- each department's request and situation and looking at the last two
years where we have not taken the three percent. We do know what -- what we risk to
the Capital Improvement Plan, but it was at a time when the economy was challenging
everyone it's not that it doesn't continue to challenge some that we don't take it lightly,
but we also have a commitment to continue to leverage every dollar that we spend and
that is being truth to the Capital Improvement Plan. If we are to continue to address and
maintain the levels of service we do have a commitment to consider the Capital
Improvement Plan. The Capital Improvement Plan does not just look at one time only
expenses, it builds in the base -- the base amounts that we will add to each year as we
continue to maintain or enhance the service that we provide our citizens. So, with that
in mind what we do -- what we are focused on and dedicated to is that we will never go
back to the three percent accumulation that we have waived to take it again. That is not
something that any of us have a desire or any interest in suggesting to you our budget
makers, but we do think that we would be doing a disservice to the direction the city is
headed, to the level of service that we have committed to our citizens to answering what
we found in the city surveys that the citizens are most interested and concerned with
and I think that the Capital Improvement Plan really focuses on that and so it was not an
easy decision to bring to you to take the full three percent, but just like you did three
years ago when you used that three percent to put it in the public safety amount, so that
we could be true to our CIP, that is another reason we are doing that -- the three
percent this year.
Zaremba: And, Madam Mayor, I agree with that. I realize that, you know, we are not
out of the woods yet in the economy -- general economy, but the last couple of years we
have put some things off that are in the CIP and as you point out if the CIP or planning
for our future needs it to have any value at all, we can't keep putting things off. We
need to be doing a little bit towards that every year and otherwise some year, you know,
if -- if we cancel the CIP five years in a row; then, somewhere around the sixth year we
are going to have to do six years worth of stuff. So, I am being supportive of taking the
three percent increase this year, because I think we have some needs that can't be put
off anymore.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
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Rountree: I agree with what David said. I think the other thing we need to consider is
that we haven't -- you know, other than the fluctuations with market value and what --
the mill levies and all that stuff that play games with one another, we have not taken into
consideration the inflation that we have seen over the last couple of years and it's not
been horrendous, but it's not been negative, even though the economy has been kind of
going the wrong direction. So, I don't have major issues with at least going forward with
a draft budget at three percent. We can dial it back if we have to. But for the purposes
of public disclosure and moving forward and being able to say these are the things that
we are looking at in terms of taking care of our -- our increased costs in certain areas
and being able to provide the services that have been expected, as well as providing for
the anticipated amenities the folks see in parks and through police and fire are not
necessarily an amenity, they are our number one service, they need to expand to
accommodate obviously technology and equipment needs, staffing requirements that
come about because of the size of the community we have.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I don't remember -- while we haven't taken the three percent, I don't think that our
service has went down one bit. We have -- I feel we have kept -- we have definitely
kept up the employees. We have -- we have given employee raises when nobody else
in the country has gotten raises. I could go -- I could take it now with the -- as a
temporary three percent. If we can cut it back we can cut it back. I think what -- in the
CIP I think what we have -- if we have heard anything it's been wants, not needs. I don't
see as our service has went -- has lost one bit. I think we have maintained our staff
above and beyond. Our facilities above and beyond. But Ican -- I can certainly look at
-- at taking the three percent seeing where we come out at, if we can give back. I feel
that -- that while charts and everything can show you whatever you want, same as
figures can, I don't think -- I think we are a long ways from any economic recovery. We
in Meridian are probably better off than 99 percent of the country and I think that proves
it by the residential permits and stuff we have been getting. That's my thoughts on it.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor. A little difficult perspective. Everything that's been said up
here you can agree with and I think there is some good comments. I look at this -- we
are not reaching back to grab the three percent that we did not take the last couple
years and I think that was a wise decision we made to not take the three percent in the
past, because of the economic situation. While it's not as great as I want it to be, it has
stabilized and we are still bumping along, but looking, hopefully, to brighter days ahead.
The concern I have if we don't take the three percent, I truly see the legislature moving
forward on a personal property tax and doing away with that tax and in many ways I
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can't disagree with that, because that's an onerous tax and one of those things -- that
does have an 800,000 dollar hit to our bottom line and -- and, unfortunately, this has
become the tax shift. But anytime the legislature does something to the tax base in one
area it shifts taxes elsewhere. So, it's just the way it works and there is nothing we can
do about that, but we do have to respond to that and we don't know how they are going
to do that, whether that's going to be over time or -- and maybe they won't get it done
this year, but it will get done and I think this allows us to cushion that blow somewhat
and move forward on some projects that need to -- need some funding that although
they won't be built next year -- for the long term. That's what we are looking out for and
trying to plan and our system has always been to save money and not bond and to plan
ahead and do it in a conservative manner and I think this still allows us to do that and
move forward on some important projects. So, that's why we can support the three
percent.
De Weerd: Well, I appreciate this discussion. I think everyone is on the same page. I
would say, just to add to what Councilman Hoaglun mentioned, we don't know what is
on the horizon. We have heard discussions about police dispatch, we have heard
discussions on the courtroom, we have heard discussions on personal property taxes.
It seems like local property taxes that bottom of the totem pole and everything flows
downhill and it lands in our laps and we don't know what is on the horizon and it's -- it's
good to know what some of those might be and we still don't know what the effects are
of laws passed last year and what potential impact they have. We have tried to
anticipate it and I certainly appreciate our Finance staff in their anticipatory thinking, but
we just want to be very cautious and -- and that's what their director's discussion was
really based on is trying to consider all the different factors and the different discussions
that are going on out there right now as we speak in some cases to just not be caught
unaware. Okay. So, we got through that first discussion as -- I think our directors have
been preparing our staff for little to no increases for this year, primarily in staff and in
salaries. As our HR director city attorney told you, we came to you last year with a
benefits package and said we won't be looking at doing more and I think it's good to
look at saving what we can, because we don't know what the impact of the national
healthcare mandate is, so we don't want to be caught unaware and there is another
additional cost that we have to plan for. So, Council, I would turn this over to you for
discussion on the one percent.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I will start this one off. I believe if we have an employer for ayear -- and you guys
have all heard this a hundred times -- that they deserve a raise and while I know that
one percent is nothing but a token, at least it's a raise, and when we discuss -- and I
think I was the first one to discuss no raises, it ate at my -- ate at me like you can't
believe, but -- so I can definitely -- we will tighten the belt somewhere else. But each
employee that's been here and worked their -- worked their tails off is deserving of
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something, even though one percent is not very much, at least it's our token of
appreciation for what they have done, so I support that a hundred percent.
Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor, the total of the -- for the entire General Fund is 188,000.
Bird: Oh. I got it.
Kilchenmann: Oh, you do? Okay. I guess I was --
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Bird. Any other discussion?
Rountree: I will second that.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I would say that I am not only very supportive, I wish we could do more. It
doesn't seem like the right time to do more, but I -- just to see the discussion for a year
from now, if -- if we end up with any greater revenue than we expect to end up, I would
like to be thinking towards putting into an employees, as opposed to other things, if at
some point we have an unexpected -- I won't call it a surplus, but an unexpected
amount of revenue that isn't sucked away by one of these other catastrophic events. I
would like to put a greater percentage of employee raise on the subject and I'm saying
that's for next year, not for this year, but I certainly hope we can work out the one
percent for this year.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, I support the one percent salary increase and I just want to
express my appreciation to Bill and HR staff, because that stuff can get eaten up by the
changes in health insurance and copays and all that in a hurry. I mean it can be still a
decrease to someone's paycheck, but we look at what they are doing trying to find
different ways of savings and doing some other things I think will help protect them and
at least they will see a few dollars in a paycheck, even though we know fuel costs and
other -- other costs seem to keep going up and up and up and if they don't go up it just
means that package is smaller that you buy, so -- but we are trying to mitigate that with
and being fiscally responsible at the same time, but I do appreciate HR trying everything
they can that that doesn't get eaten up to those benefit costs and think they are on the
right track on that.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Can I ask you -- on this one percent, it's a straight across the board to every
employee, it's not a merit?
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De Weerd: Yes.
Bird: Okay. Because somebody said earlier today it was a merit.
De Weerd: Well, Mr. Bird, we -- we know how much you like merit. Okay. So, I guess
better not put on my glasses for that. Stacy, where do you want to start now?
Kilchenmann: How about Development Services.
De Weerd: Okay.
Kilchenmann: And I told Bruce he has to come up here and explain each one again in
agonizing detail.
De Weerd: No. Really. You don't, Bruce. Or I guess your name is Brad for the
moment. Council, any questions regarding Community Development and their budget
in front of you, as well as their enhancement request? Okay. Not even as an initiation
to a new director?
Kilchenmann: You're just going to let him go like that?
De Weerd: Remember Anna ask -- we spent a lot of time on that.
Kilchenmann: Yes. Oh, well.
De Weerd: Well, we will get into General Fund then.
Kilchenmann: I don't know if you want to go through the -- it's easy if we just go down
through the replacements and probably just stop if somebody has questions on any item
-- any one of them.
De Weerd: Okay. Yeah. Council, in front of you you should have your General Fund
budget request summary, the replacement that was added to your binder today, and
that's also up on the board. So, do you have any questions in regards to the capital
replacements as is listed in front of you?
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: No questions, just a comment and desire, that as we replace vehicles we
take the vehicles that we are replacing out of inventory and dispose of them.
Bird: Amen.
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De Weerd: What you're -- you're actually helping replace parks instead of giving them
all of the hand me downs, we can do that. Just kidding. You bet. We could do that.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Bird: Regarding the compressor, Mark, I know you said -- and I don't know how
accurate your figure was -- 20,000 to rebuild it and with rebuild they don't give you any
guarantee? And who are you talking to?
Niemeyer: The very last part of your question, Councilman Bird, I can't answer. I don't
know who Ken was talking to. It was somebody with the manufacturer of the
compressor, but I don't have that exact name with me. I believe you still do get a
warranty on the work, but it's typically a 12 month warranty.
Bird: You get a parts warranty and stuff, the same as -- as you would on a new -- or at
least that's what I found. I had quite a few compressors rebuilt and -- and we got the
same -- basically the same warranty you do on a new one.
Niemeyer: Yeah. Ithink -- he told me that the warranty works -- or the warranty on the
work done would be for 12 months and that's why when we looked at it it does this
make sense, we --
Bird: Labor. How about parts?
Niemeyer: I'd have to ask him --
Bird: Okay.
Niemeyer: -- to be sure, before I --
Bird: Because I -- you know, we could save 30,000 and get another ten years use out
of -- because, really, a compressor, there is not a lot of internal parts that can go real
bad.
Niemeyer: Yeah. Ithink part of it was the leaks. You got certain oils that go through
that and I'm not --
Bird: And your loose bearings on your --
Niemeyer: Right.
Bird: -- on your belts and stuff is the things that can -- that will usually go bad, so I
would say leave the 50 in there, but let's see if we can't get the 30,000 back somewhere
else.
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Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I have a question on vehicles in general. Do we get any trade-in value out of
the old one or do we beat them up so much that they are north worth anything to
anybody and we should offer them to --
De Weerd: I think we are just lucky that we don't have to pay to get rid of them.
Zaremba: Okay.
De Weerd: So --
Zaremba: Somebody to haul them away.
De Weerd: At some point that's where many of these vehicles are and, you know,
hope that you have noticed over the last several years we have been using Public
Works replacement criteria as -- in an approach to showing the -- the maintenance, the
mileage -- it's not just because there is a number of miles on it, but there is other factors
as well. So, it's been a positive change in showing the true need for the replacement,
other than just replacing it because that was our policy of a certain number of miles and
stuff. We have tried to really look at this holistically and make sure that there is a true
need. But in answer to your question I think we are lucky to get anything for those
vehicles. Stacy.
Kilchenmann: Yes, Madam Mayor, Members of Council. They are all auctioned off
and we usually get 1,500 to 3,000 dollars for each of them. But they all do -- unless we
donate them, they do all go to a public auction.
Zaremba: So that just goes into the General Fund, then, or --
Kilchenmann: Yes.
Zaremba: Does it -- in another case where a vehicle might be purchased through the
Enterprise Fund, would that go into the Enterprise Fund then?
Kilchenmann: Correct.
Zaremba: Okay. So, it stays in whatever fund it came from in the first place.
Kilchenmann: Yes. Correct.
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Zaremba: Okay. Thank you. And I have looked at the -- I forget what it's called, but the
sheet that you compare vehicles with and I think that's an excellent -- excellent method
of determining when they are on their last legs and need to go.
De Weerd: Yeah. Because I think even in our police department some of the vehicles
have been allowed to stay in service longer because of the criteria that they are using
and they have been okay. But this -- this new rating seems to work and I think in police
in particular they were a couple of vehicles that we probably kept on a little bit too long
because of the budget considerations, but I think this year it kind of catches us up and
we can pretty much find a better rhythm. Would that true, chief?
Lavey: Madam Mayor, Council, that's the truth. I was just going to share a little bit
more is that surprisingly we have been getting a little bit more out of our cars when we
have been auctioning them off. As manufacturers have changed and they no longer
produce these cars for the general citizenry, there is always that want or desire to have
a police car that they can't get otherwise and so people pay a little bit more for. But also
there is a couple of firms that actually purchase these cars to refurbish them and, then,
they show up in Chicago and New York and every place else as taxis and so they pay a
little bit more --
De Weerd: And even in Meridian.
Lavey: Yeah. They pay a little bit more for those cars, too. So, we were getting 600 to
800 dollars if we were lucky for some of our cars, but surprisingly we have been getting
12 to 15 hundred for some of these cars. So, with the new Tahoes and Caprises out
there that cannot be purchased -- the police package ones cannot be purchased by
citizenry, we hope to be getting a little bit more back, but our problem is is in the past
when we finally deemed time to replace a car in the police department, that car probably
was on the books still for another couple of years in other city departments as well and
so you usually found them on the shoulder of the roadway with a tow truck hooked up to
them when it was finally time for them to go. So, we have got our use out of -- out of
these cars. Very much so.
De Weerd: Kind of like getting blood out of a turnip. Any other questions from Council?
Okay. I guess we will move to the enhancements and first four are City Hall. Or first
three. Any questions regarding those?
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: I think I heard the comment that the kiosk probably could be done for about
10,000 dollars less.
De Weerd: Yes.
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Rountree: So, why don't we do that.
De Weerd: Okay. So, change that from 25 to --
Rountree: To 15.
De Weerd: -- to 15. And so that was the kiosk, as well as equipping that.
Rountree: Right.
De Weerd: Okay.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes. Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: It's not the budget part of the subject, but having looked at the way it was
marked out on the floor of the lobby, I think I would prefer to see it on the south wall of
the lobby, as opposed to the north wall where it's marked.
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba, I would agree with you. I have not been a fan to have it over
on the north side, because it's over by the public meeting rooms and it's so distracted
already, all the people walking by, just imagine someone standing in -- in the vicinity
and -- there is enough traffic.
Zaremba: And it also looked to me like somebody coming out of the elevator and
making a left turn to head for the front door is just as likely to walk behind that desk and
get caught, as they are to walk around the front of it. So, I -- it appears to me that the
south wall area is a better choice, however it's configured over there.
De Weerd: Uh-huh.
Lavey: Madam Mayor, just for the record, that when the communication group was
meeting we envision it being over there as well. I didn't know they were thinking about
the north wall, but -- and it's going to be designed to be mobile, so you can pretty much
move it where ever you want, so --
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Going on to the emergency power backups. Before I approve 170,000 I want
more proof of what that's going to cost and what it is and why it has to -- why you have
to have two new transformers and all that kind of stuff. I agree we need a backup, don't
get me wrong there, but I want some backup to this 170,000 dollars.
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De Weerd: Well, Council, we can do as has been suggested on another item, is -- is --
as you suggested on the air compressor, we can designate it and certainly before
anything moves forward a report comes back to Council and additional authorization is
sought.
Bird: All right.
De Weerd: If that's the appropriate -- if that's how you would -- I mean --
Bird: Yes.
De Weerd: -- we will not take this as just free rein to go out do it, it will be brought back
in front of you for approval.
Bird: Now, wait a minute. If we approve it as an enhancement right now for 170,000 --
De Weerd: Uh-huh.
Bird: -- they are entitled to go up to 170,000 to get it done
Rountree: Not until the budget is approved.
Bird: Well, that's what I'm -- that's what I'm getting. I want -- before we give that final
budget (want -- I want some more facts and figures.
De Weerd: Yeah. Well, no, I think what the Council has asked is does it necessarily
have to be as detailed or as suggested and I think that -- I hope that John can come
back prior to the public hearing with detail and that's what we will --
Bird: Chief, you have got a backup in your building over there, don't you? Didn't we put
it in?
Lavey: Yeah. Madam Mayor, Councilman Bird, yeah, we did.
Bird: Does it -- does it take care of your system?
Lavey: Let me give a little bit of highlights on how it works. It's an independent system.
You have your Idaho Power system, you have your emergency backup system. You
don't have them together, because you want an automatic system and so you want the
generator to kick on the minute you lose power and just to power up. If you have those
dual systems working you're going to get a spike and you're going to get a crash and
everything. So, you would actually have to manually go in there, switch off Idaho Power
and, then, manually switch on your generator power to work it and, then, when you're
going to convert back and forth you have to go manually switch it again. So, ours are all
automatic. So, in the walls you're going to see outlets that have orange colored.
Those are automatic backup, whereas you're going to have the silver ones, which are
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the standard power. It is separate systems. And so for the police department we can
completely function -- not one hundred percent, but we can function completely in a
department in a limited capacity in the whole department and so I think -- but I don't
know this -- is that that's the plan as well is go into say Finance and say if in a state of
emergency how many stations need to run. In the fire department in a state of
emergency how many stations need to run. Because your generator is not going to be
able to run this entire building without it just wearing out and the wear and tear on it.
And so I'm assuming that's where the additional wiring is coming in and that sort of
thing. As far as the transformers and everything else, I, too, am not an electrician, so
can't answer that. I do know my neighbor was an electrician that worked in this building,
but I have not spoken to him about that either.
Bird: Chief, answer me one question, then. How does a generator know when Idaho
Power goes down if they are not integrated systems?
Lavey: They are -- they are integrated -- they are switched and it senses and so it's got
a -- it's got a power sensor and it's right in there where you can -- it's kind of like your --
your inverter in a travel trailer where you can tell, oh, it's getting power this way, oh, we
lost power there, we switch over, oh, power is back on we stitch back. And so it's all
auto -- it's a sensor, it's all automatic, it's got a control panel, you walk in and say this is
-- this is what's working, this isn't what's working, this is how long it's been on and that
sort of thing.
Bird: Okay.
Lavey: That's how it works in our department.
Bird: In your department.
Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Maybe -- maybe John should have brought a prop. Yes, Stacy.
Kilchenmann: You can always leave it like this as a tentative and, then, we will have
him come back like maybe next week and, then, before we do the real one we can
change it.
De Weerd: Okay. That sounds -- does that sound like a plan? Council? Yeah?
Zaremba: I would just say the chief's explanation actually does help me. I wasn't
thinking. You would have the possibility that you would have both power sources
supplying at the same time the way that was thinking of designing it and that would be a
spike that could burn everything. So, I understand your explanation and I appreciate it.
Lavey: You can make it work, it's just -- it's just manual.
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Zaremba: Yeah.
Lavey: But it was a little painful to listen to the explanation earlier.
De Weerd: I think the software discussion was more painful.
Lavey: Just wait until we come to that section.
De Weerd: Just saying. Okay. Street lights. Any questions or discussion on that?
Rountree: Madam Mayor, I'm having difficulty with the split corridor street lighting on
Meridian Road. The side -- and on the left side we are going to, basically, have what
we have. And I'm not saying we need to put the MDC lights on the west side either. It
just seems to me that we are -- we are not really accomplishing a lot for a lot of money.
It appears that those decorative streetlights are about twice as expensive as a regular
streetlight and, I don't know, it seems like a lot of money for what we are getting.
Because all up and down both sides of Main Street where we have consistency and you
have a district, but just having it on one side of the street kind of doesn't make a lot of
sense to me.
De Weerd: I guess I will add a perspective in terms of designating your Old Town and
the sense of arrival and I think that's what the streetlights were intended to do with the
decorative and that was even before the destination downtown detailed some of this,
but we did want to delineate where Old Town began and make it a special area and I
think even before the urban renewal district that's been a goal. Having the lighting on
one side of the street, while it still lights the corridor, you know, you -- it encourages
people to be on that side of the street certainly. It still casts enough light that it benefits
the other side as well, but not -- not to the same degree. The half was certainly looking
at a city shared, desired, to start lighting these corridors. If the city wants to say, well,
this is what we would have normally paid and that's how you make your decision, that's
fair, too. This was a starting point and certainly I -- I feel that since it is a lighting
standard that the city's trying to promote some of these important corridors that I felt that
there is a responsibility of the city to be a partner in the expense. To what degree is
certainly a discussion for you all.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, that was my thinking on this when that -- listening to Ashley
the impact to their budget would certainly be largely based on what they get in and they
are asking the city to partner and I was thinking, well, what would we normally do if we
were to put that funding to just normal street lighting and -- and I would think that would
be our -- our part in that. I don't know if that would be 175,000, but I really don't know
what that -- what that number would be.
De Weerd: Tim, would you have an answer to that or maybe that's something that we
come back to if you don't.
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Curns: Madam Mayor, I think I understand the question. I guess what you're asking is
if we were to come in and do it with a standard city light pole and fixture what would we
spend on that same length of road.
De Weerd: Yes.
Curns: I would estimate that somewhere between probably 50 and 75 thousand.
mean that's pretty similar to what we are doing over on Linder Road and we are doing
about three-quarters of a mile for about 50,000, so -- if that helps.
De Weerd: Yes, it does. But I guess I would also add for the discussion purposes is
the city did show our commitment to it when we also put it on -- on our street side as
well. But that is the desired look and feel for that corridor, so --
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Seeings how I like seeing it on both boards, I -- I don't think the -- to be truthful
with you, I don't recall anything in the city wanting these lights. These expensive lights.
Now, [ do remember MDC wanting these expensive lights downtown. While I think that
we are two separate entities, we have got to -- or should -- better be -- I kind of fall the
way that I kind of get from discussion here on a couple by other councilmen. I think that
the city's involvement should be what would it cost to put the normal streetlights in and
so I -- that -- and I don't get me wrong, I like the decorative streetlights, but I don't think
-- I don't think the city has committed to those like MDC has. And the city didn't commit
to this split corridor lighting. MDC did. So, if -- any help we can get would be -- will be
highly appreciated on my part. But I -- I have a problem putting 175,000 dollars towards
it, to be truthful with you.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Tim kind of answered my question and to your point about the city doing it on
the City Hall site. I think we are in the redevelopment district and we did that as -- as
good faith to be consistent with what their desires were, as we would have expected
anybody else doing the development in this area. As far as supporting MDC's project
on the split corridor, I don't have a bit of problem of adding street lights or giving them
the portion that we would have contributed to provide street lights for it not in the district
and we have already contributed our streetlights on our development. So, I can easily
go the 70,000 dollars range that Tim has indicated that would cost us if we were putting
streetlights -- the same streetlights that we have on the other side of the street that are
going to be put in and are already there. So, I would suggest we just knock that down
100, 105 thousand dollars.
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Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I guess in my expectations I definitely expect the decorative streetlights on
Main Street. It actually was a new thought to me that they would go on Meridian Street.
Meridian Road. But let me just throw something out. Since we do have them on the
east side of Meridian Road at the City Hall, would it look to people approaching this
area if the few of them that are at the crossover, from there up to ending at the City Hall,
they were the decorative ones and, then, anything the rest of the way up Meridian was
the standard ones. That's kind of a compromise. Now we are talking about probably
spending 125,000 instead of 175 or 105. But I think I'm agreeing with the others that I
don't really see the need to have the decorative ones the whole length of Meridian
Road, but since we already have them at City Hall, might we want from south of the City
Hall?
Bird: Madam Mayor?
Zaremba: That's a question.
Bird: Madam Mayor, can lanswer --
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: -- on my part? While -- when we -- when we went to this split corridor we made
Meridian Road the same as Main Street, in my opinion. The decorative lights have
been committed to Meridian Road. Whether the city helps with it or not, they are going
to -- they got to be for decorative, because they are part of the main -- they are your
entrance in from the north now, so it's part of Main Street. So, I don't day -- David,
don't see how we cannot go with the decorative lights down that. I'm like Charlie, I
could -- 70, 75 thousand I would be happy to help with what it would have cost us -- if
MDC hadn't of stepped up and committed to it and the city would have -- we would have
had to and if that's what it would have cost us, we can help with the decorative, so --
but, David, my opinion they have to be decorative to match downtown.
Zaremba: I see that.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, I agree with that. If we are going to do that we may as well go
the distance. It's just a matter of what that amount is going to be that the city helps out
in -- in helping MDC reach that goal and it's 75,000, is it, that we would spend or 70,000
-- Tim, do you have any desire to rework your figures or are okay with 75,000 -- to keep
75,000. So, now that we are talking about real numbers I want to give you a chance to
make any amendments if needed.
Curns: Councilman Hoaglun, really it's my -- the number to me is -- I guess it's more
important to MDC and what they are trying to do and to kind of insure that they can
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follow through with the project. I think, really, any -- it sounded to me like any
contribution they could get from the city would be really helpful for them in insuring that
they can complete the project in the project timeline.
Hoaglun: And, Tim, what was the project total again? Was it 400,000?
Curns: Yeah. I think it was about 435,000.
Hoaglun: Okay.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Tim, in your -- in your estimate if 70,000 say, are you including the wiring and
everything, too, that would have to be done in that?
Curns: That would be correct.
Bird: Okay. Because, you know, we are having to pay for the wiring and stuff.
Curns: Absolutely. We do get a little bit of a benefit, because ACHD is already tearing
up the road --
Bird: Yeah.
Curns: -- so you save a little bit on the -- on the cost of installing that, but -- right.
Bird: But your cost that you give us, the 75 -- 70 or 75 thousand whatever, included
wiring that we are having to pay.
Curns: Correct.
Bird: I mean I want -- I want us to cover what it is.
Curns: Absolutely.
Bird: I'm selfish.
De Weerd: Okay. Council, what do you want to plug in there?
Bird: What do you want, Brad?
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, I was thinking as we went through this process 75,000, that
was my thinking. Okay. Bottom line 75,000. But you know --
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De Weerd: Okay. We will move from streetlights -- anything further on streetlights?
Discussion? Okay. Other Government?
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: It's not on here and maybe it's coming up somewhere else, but in the Other
Government suggestion or budgets we have -- we have had a request to raise our
contribution to VRT by two percent. When do we discuss that?
Bird: Right now.
Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor, Members of Council, I believe that we have -- we already
have -- is it ten percent, Todd? We will look at -- I think we already have that built in
here. We have already increased it five percent. Todd already built in a five percent
increase that's already in here. So, we could probably actually go back and decrease it.
Zaremba: Okay. That answers my question.
Bird: What's it going to be?
Hoaglun: Seventy-five.
Bird: Maybe two percent or five percent.
Zaremba: I'm pretty sure they are asking for two percent.
Kilchenmann: 2.5 percent.
Rountree: Two and a half percent of --
Kilchenmann: They asked for 2.5 percent. We just got it today, so --
De Weerd: Have you already admitted that, then?
Kilchenmann: No.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: I hadn't seen that request. Yes. Mr. Bird.
Bird: Have you got the emergency ICRMP in there, too?
Lavoie: Madam Mayor, Councilman Bird, to answer your question, it will be about a 700
dollar savings that you can see on the screen right now. I budgeted a little over 105,000
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
Page 89 of 95
dollars. In the letter that we have today is requesting 104,806 dollars. I will be able to
reduce the budget by 800 dollars.
Bird: Good.
De Weerd: Okay. Do we want to move to HR?
Bird: Sure.
De Weerd: Have you any questions in that regard?
Rountree: Madam Mayor, I don't have any questions about the enhancement, but in
terms of -- and this has nothing to do with the bottom line on the budget, but the city
attorney's wages are all in HR. Is there a reason for that, Bill, as opposed to splitting
them with -- between legal and IT, other than convenience?
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, probably Finance can answer the
question eventually, but that was just -- that was the way they set it up when we started
this position seven and a half years ago, since there was a joint position. They had to
fund it in one -- they didn't want to split it between two funds that were all in the General
Fund is my recollection. But Stacy or Todd probably will have a better answer. I don't
recall the specific reason.
Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I believe it was because Bill
replaced Pauline, who was the HR director, so it just -- he was the HR director. We can
split it if you reduce the -- we can split Bill between HR and Legal.
Rountree: Well, I think that's the fair way to represent his time.
Kilchenmann: It is. You're correct. And, then, HR and Legal are both split 50 percent
to Enterprise Fund, so -- and IT. And Finance. So, yeah, we can -- we can --
Rountree: So, it won't affect those, it will just affect the --
Kilchenmann: No. It will still be clean that way, so that's something we can definitely do
and we do it in this budget so when it's appropriated in '13 that's how it looks.
Rountree: Very good.
Bird: What kind of a break? Sixty-forty do you think, Charlie?
Rountree: Leave that to Stacy to figure out.
Bird: Figure out a percent. Figure out a percent.
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
Page 90 of 95
Kilchenmann: That would probably be up to Bill. But I would just say 50-50. Between
him to --
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I guess it's really more of an accounting
function really, right? We can certainly -- it looks like you don't pay a city attorney and
you pay a lot for an HR director and the reality is probably if you split if 50-50 that's
probably as representative as --
Bird: Okay.
Nary: -- as possible without getting into real nuances of five or ten percent.
Rountree: That's great.
Kilchenmann: I think we should make him track in his time in 15 minute increments.
Bird: Yeah.
Nary: The standard is six minutes. Six minute increments. Yeah.
Bird: You'd spend more time writing than you would working.
Rountree: That would be helpful. At least you can get an idea of where -- where it's
distributed.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: On the subject of enhancements for the iPads, one for the HR manager,
three for legal staff, I would be happy to offer -- I am not having a warm and fuzzy
relationship with the IPad and I certainly would contribute one of these. The city already
owns it and if it's -- I can contribute it to a better use than myself, I would be happy to do
that.
Rountree: It's just a fancy Frisbee, is that what you're saying?
Bird: Yeah. We can do one, Bill.
De Weerd: So, I guess you can reduce that to two.
Nary: That's fine. We certainly -- we have one -- the reason I put them in is the one
that I currently have been using was the loaner from IT. It's been used by a number of
departments. It's one they used to check out and I have been using it and, then, if
somebody needs it we check it back in. So, I was just wanting them dedicated to our
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
Page 91 of 95
department. So, whether it comes from one that's already purchased, that's fine. So,
we can take one out. That's fine with me.
Zaremba: It would give me great joy to have it put to better use.
De Weerd: Okay. There is nothing under IT or Finance. If you get below the merit
there, Todd. If Fire is next.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Mark, are you real comfortable with that record management system? The
49,225, is that going to do the job for us or a year from now it's going to be outdated and
we need a new one?
Niemeyer: Madam Mayor, Councilman Bird, we are comfortable with that number. We
got just bids from three different vendors just to see what price ranges were, with no --
obviously no commitment that we were going to buy, we just wanted to see what price
ranges were. So, we feel like even through an RFP we can get that price point where
we need it.
Bird: But, Mark, is it a system that will work for us for the next couple three, four, five
years or so --
Niemeyer: Yes, sir.
Bird: It's not going to be outmoded a year from now?
Niemeyer: Right. That's where we bring IT into the equation to help us review the
proposal.
De Weerd: Well, certainly between that item and the police department we will just pull
those from the minutes, frame them, and put them on your wall just to remind you. Any
other questions in regards to the Fire Department enhancement? Okay. Parks.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, just the one comment I have and that's probably for next year.
The Tully Park, if we are going to continue to have -- I know they are looking at
reclaimed water. If we are going to continue to have water shortages there in terms of
one making water and those types of things in conflicts, boy, I'd like to see that one get
rectified sooner, as opposed to later. I'm fine withdrawing it this year, but that's one of
those things that you're trying to manage around schedules and whatnot and events
and just so for next year, Steve, if you're still having problems I'd like to see one back.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
Page 92 of 95
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: On Item 6, take another 18,000 dollars out of that and nominate the Amity-
Eagle roundabout activity. And you have already taken out the Ustick-Ten Mile 5,000,
so --
Bird: Take out the Eagle-Amity?
De Weerd: And I guess as we do that we will definitely need to either have it as a
future agenda item topic or we can draft a letter to ACHD.
Rountree: See what they are going to do.
De Weerd: Yeah.
Rountree: Encourage them to make that their poster child.
Bird: They are the ones that -- that's what they want it for.
Rountree: Yeah.
De Weerd: We didn't ask for that -- that intersection enhancement so -- they -- they are
designing our intersections for us. That wasn't our request. They can landscape it.
Okay. Anything else under that item? How about Police?
Hoaglun: Well, Madam Mayor, since I didn't understand the software upgrade
discussion, do we need it at all?
Lavey: I can re-explain that.
Rountree: Please don't. We will give it to you.
Hoaglun: See, (thought -- that's better. We will just leave it -- leave it alone.
De Weerd: Okay. So --
Rountree: So, just a question on five. I mean that's going to go into the public safety
account. Is that really and truly what the end result is?
Kilchenmann: The what?
Rountree: The end of the -- the end of that --
Bird: Down to the police.
Rountree: The employees -- in the --
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
Page 93 of 95
Kilchenmann: Essentially, yes.
Rountree: That will end up in the --
Kilchenmann: Yes.
Rountree: Okay.
Kilchenmann: We will designate it for that.
Rountree: Okay.
Kilchenmann: I'm actually thinking of starting to put all our capital projects --
designating them the Capital Projects Fund, so we can just look and see the ones that
we are seeing for --
Rountree: That would be good.
Bird: That would be fantastic.
De Weerd: Perfect. Okay. Anything else, Council?
Nary: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Nary.
Nary: Thank you. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, if you agreed with the
concepts -- and I guess you may not have to decide that today. Probably in your final
budget setting. But I just wanted to keep in front of you any of that savings that we were
to generate from the health plan, we wanted you to dedicate to, basically, a health fund
so that they are for afuture -- you know, whether future increases or a future benefit
and I think probably for Finance's perspective you will at some point need a motion to
create that, so -- and I don't know that has to be today. It probably doesn't. But I just
wanted to keep that in front of you.
Rountree: Okay.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I think that is a tremendous idea. Bill, why don't you and Stacy workup something
that --
Nary: Okay.
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
Page 94 of 95
Bird: -- and bring back -- I would like to see it in a resolution or something.
Nary: Okay.
Bird: That way, then, it don't get lost over the --
De Weerd: Uh-huh.
Nary: We will do that.
De Weerd: But we keep the line item as is until there is a recommendation that comes
back in the form of a resolution.
Bird: We don't have to do that at this time. We can do that later.
De Weerd: Okay.
Kilchenmann: So, the bottom line now is you have 472,000 left over.
De Weerd: So, Stacy, has the Capital Improvement Fund been fully funded for the
anticipated projects for 2013.
Kilchenmann: I don't think we planned anything out -- we haven't planned anything out
of the CIP fund. It's still -- yeah. The only thing that we added is -- because we did the
maintenance building this year. We did that. So, we just had the -- we just had an
amount in there that we haven't designated to spend on anything I guess is what I want
to say. We can either -- we have several options. We can say we are going to
appropriate this to go into the Capital Improvement -- or into the CIP fund. I also was
talking to Councilman Hoaglun a little earlier about when we get to the end of the year
we can take any excessive revenue or operating, we can hand that to the public safety
fund or the CIP fund and that's how we initially built up the public safety fund. And I
think barring any catastrophe we probably should have some saving this year and we
haven't -- this doesn't consider the interest that we are paying on the lawsuit and so
forth, so that is kind of an unknown that we want to be conservative about.
Rountree: Yeah.
De Weerd: Yeah. I think that you probably -- that needs to be set aside in those
contingencies for legal or the dispatch or -- there is a number of potential expenses that
are looming out there that that could easily be gobbled up, so --
Kilchenmann: What I would recommend is we just let it -- leave it, let it go to Fund
Balance and, then, when we got -- when we close out '13 -- or '12 we can work it and
we should have a better idea on some of those items and if we do have excessive,
that's how we can formally move it into the CIP fund. Yeah. After we close '12.
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 10, 2012
Page 95 of 95
Rountree: That would be my preference.
Bird: That would be my preference, too.
Zaremba: Sounds good.
De Weerd: Okay. Well, Council, if there is no further discussion or comments that you
would like to make at this point, I would entertain a motion to adjourn.
Bird: So moved.
Rountree: Second.
De Weerd: All those in favor say aye. All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 2:25 P.M.
AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OFTHESE PROCEEDINGS
1 I o~~/~
MAYORT Y DE WEERD TEAPPROVED
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ATTEST: ~~ ~90~
JAYCEE 9~LMAN, CITY CLERK
City of
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ESTIMATED FY2013 LEVY RATES
FY2012
Computation of 3% budget increase
highest of last 3 years budget F $18,950,C
multiply by 3%
New Construction/Annex
2011 new construction $96,073,'.
2011 annexation $1,162,7
FY11 approved levy 0
new construction budget increa:
annexation budget increase
foregone
Maximum Property Tax $19,335,C
Taxable Value final5/2012$. $4,318,689,1
7/6/2011
annexation
iber 7/6/2011
County
Computation of 3% budget increase
highest of last 3 years budget [
multiply by 3% C
New Construction/Annex
2012 new construction
2012 annexation
FY12 approved levy rate 0.004477
new construction budget increase
annexation budget increase
foregone
Maximum Property Tax
Taxable Value
Levy Rate
$127,934,989
$1,000,000
$572,774
$4,477
$20,492,369
$4,671,296,711
0.004386869
Without 3% update 5/8/2012
FY2013
Computation of 3% budget increase
highest of last 3 years budget
$19,335,066
multiply by 3%
New Construction/Annex
2012 new construction
$127,934,989
2012 annexation
$1,000,000
FY12 approved levy rate 0.004477
new construction budget increase
$572,774
annexation budget increase
$4,477
foregone
Maximum Property Tax
$19,912,317
Taxable Value
$4,671,296,771
$580,052
7/9/2012
General Fund FY2013 Budgeted Revenue
Dollar Change
$32.1 Million Dollars
Revenue Type FY2012 to FY2013
G.n... I
Property Tax $1,156,000
r.../Ma.
Develop Services $317,000
rr.�cnl:. nterese
Other Govern
�au
imw.tr..: ax
Revenue Sharing $157,000
3% �,.,..
IrrpactFees $96,000
Omer
Franchise Fees -$7,000
G.....
Other Fees -$6,075
R.—u. - oP.m
sn.d. T-
Interest -$129,000
17% sate
$1,583,925
3% new construction
o.z.i.P°..t
3% base increase
ERe
s`M—T4
ilding Perrrits
2-450
3-550
FY2013 Enterprise Fund Budgeted Revenue
Dollar Change
$23.8 Million Dollars
Revenue Type FY2012 to FY2013
sewer
Water Usage $220,000
c<nn..a.n ral.. F...
6%
Sewer Usage $448,000
ei
Connection Fees $400,000
w.t.r �w.t.rus.e.
smm
Misc $30,000
conn-tmn
F... aG�
Interest 185000
si
$913,000
Usage Sales 2%< inc over FY2011
1.5% over
ninirrum est FY2012
sewer u....
Connection Fees at 550 building permit
sI ee
52%
level
7/9/2012
Short Term Revenue Risk Exposure — Legislative Changes
• Passed
— House Bill 519 — exempts development site
improvements from property tax, unknown
retroactive impact. Follows on the heels of bill
allowing retroactive switch from commercial back to
agricultural exemption for stalled developments.
($19 million in value new construction — year #1)
• Not Passed Probably Coming Back
— Personal property tax exemption — FY2013 effect
$800,000 property tax revenue
— Variety of other exemptions for property and sales
tax
Other Revenue Risk Exposure
• Court House Revenue - $400,000 ???
• The Economy - The Next Ten Years; Local- State —
Nation
— European economic crisis, slowdown in China impacts
US Manufacturing
— Gridlock in Congress creates business uncertainty
"Falling off the Cliff" scenario expiration of tax cuts
and stimulus programs etc
— Weak Consumer spending - High Unemployment
— Long term change in markets - From ownership to
renting — growth in low paying service sector retail
jobs
Current and Historical Revenue Available for Enhancements
General Fund History Discretionary Revenue
Community Development Services
History Discretionary Revenue
$30,000,000
$25,000,000
$a,roo,oro
$20,000,000
$15,000,000
$2,000,00D
$10,000,000
$1,000,000
$o
1000ao
$5,000,000
$0
-$2,DDO,00D
@ a 9v @ d @oy @oy @ou @cy @oy
d@ar�,r1
@et�r1
@o k" @ouhY�@o @ d @� @ d N',
%� l
�1�?� (�Z
0 0e(�100, 1%10,p(FYy,110
04 0 Zej(,y101, 1010
��zPo8
3 � � �B
88 -Budget DDiteeetlonuy Revenue
egae ea{ed ogkazd:eq Re:ense o6 gxiFxs oCara0.emeee
Revenue Available for Enhancements
7/9/2012
3
Taxable Value Up — Levy Rate Going Down
City of Meridian Levy Rate History
0.004500
0.004000
$7,000,000,o00
0.003500
0.003000
i
0.002500
0.002000
0.001500
$5,000,000,000
0.001000
-
0.000500
0.000000
FY2006 FY2007 FY2008 FY2009 FY2010 FY2011 FY2012 FY2013
Change in City of Meridian Taxable Value and New Construction (net
exemptions)
$800,000,000
$7,000,000,o00
$6,000,000,0oo
$600,000,000
$5,000,000,000
$500,000,000
- $4,000,000,Oo0
$400,000,000
Sa,00O,000,000
$300,000,000
-
- $2,000,000,000
$200,000,000
-
$100,000,000
$O _
FY06 FYo2G9
Taxable V. lue
$o
rY12 rY1
y w< r --n Value
Long Term Capital Improvement Plan Funding
• New Construction increases property Use of General Fund Balances
tax 2% per year. (5 year plan)
— $5.8 million dollars General Fund
• City takes allowable base increase of 3% — $2 million dollars Public Safety
Fund
• Other General Fund revenue remains — $1.9 million dollars Rural Fire
level District
• Operating and Personnel costs increase Impact Fees —fund balance and future
no more than 3% outside of CIP driven revenue stream
increases. — $6.9 million dollars
• Donations - $3.78 million dollars
7/9/2012
L!
General Fund Capital Improvement Plan Costs
• Total FY2013 to FY2017 capital costs- $26 million dollars
• Total FY2013 to FY2017 additional annual operating costs - $1.7
million dollars
• Unrestricted General Fund Balance end of FY2017 - $3.8 million
dollars (s/b at least reserve balance of $8.5 million dollars)
• Plan timeframe will stretch to accommodate funding!
Review - Actual Spent General Fund FY2005 thru FY2011
(excludes computer equipment)
General Fund Capital Expenditures History
(FY2005 thru FY2011)
30,000,000
25,000,000
20,000,000
15,000,000
10,000,000
5,000,000
0
Administration Parks Fire Police
■General Fund 0 Impact Fees N Rural Fire District ® Donations
7/9/2012
0