2012-07-11 BudgetMeridian City Council Budget Meeting July 11, 2012
A special meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 10:00 a.m.,
Wedesday, July 11, 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: I will go ahead and get today's meeting started. For the record, it is
Wednesday, July 11th. It's 10:00 o'clock. We will start with roll attendance, Madam
Clerk.
Item 2: Adoption of the Agenda
De Weerd: Item No. 2 is adoption of the agenda.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd; Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: I move adoption of the special meeting agenda as printed.
Rountree: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to adopt the agenda as printed. All those in
favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 3: City of Meridian FY2013 Budget Meeting Hearings
De Weerd: Item 3 is our budget hearing. Today we have Enterprise Fund. Yea. That
was heartfelt, by the way.
Wastewater Department
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Barry: Well, thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. We have a very fun
and exciting budget presentation for you this afternoon -- or, actually, this morning I
should say. No. It may not be all of that, but we do have a good budget presentation, I
think, for you. So, what I'd like to do is, first of all, recognize those who helped put our
budget together this year. Obviously, this is an endeavor that involves quite a number
of people, including yourselves, of course. But the Mayor, our Council liaison David
Zaremba, our certainly Finance staff, most of my staff that are in the audience today
have had some sort of part in putting this budget together, as well as I want to give
special recognition to Amber Looney and also John McCormick, who were instrumental
as well in working through the last several months to help reconcile and put together our
budget as represented for the department across all divisions. Yeah. We should
applaud. It seems a little odd, but -- nevertheless. This is the --
Kilchenmann: That's applause for Amber and John for putting up with us -- for putting
up with Finance for several weeks.
Barry: That's true. Finance has been great this year. I mean we have really over the
last several years in particular strengthened our working relationship with the Finance
Department and we are grateful for their contributions and assistance in all of this and I
think our relationship through John and Amber and Stacy and her staff have been
markedly improved. So, we are grateful for that. This is the agenda we have for you
today. I will talk briefly about the background of our budget, budget and economic
trends and how they relate to our budget, our approach, and the impact of our budget
for this fiscal year. And, then, we will get specifically into the enhancements that we are
requesting for this year through a number of different divisions. We will wrap up with a
quick budget summary and, then, open it up for any questions, comments, or concerns
you might have. This slide is really more for those in the audience, which we have very
few of today, other than Public Works staff. Or those watching at home, right, the
differences between the General Fund and the Enterprise Fund. I won't go into detail,
because you all know that, other than to say as you all know the Enterprise Fund is not
funded through taxes or revenue sharing or those sorts of things, it's primarily funded
through base and user fees and that is to support the operations, maintenance, and
capital construction administration and engineering components of the utilities. So, let's
talk briefly about budget and economic trends. This is a -- this slide shows assessment
revenues and as you can see no surprise with regard to the economy and how the
economy has been unfolding for the last several years back to 2006. One of the heights
of our growth as a city, you know, we were collecting on the order of close to ten million
dollars in assessment revenues. These are hook-up fees for water and sewer
connection. That has dropped to around 2.8 million was the lowest and now we see the
-- sort of the bottoming out and a turning upward, if you will, although slight, we do
project that we will be increasing our overall assessments by maybe 400 to 500
thousand dollars this next fiscal year. One thing that's important to note about this slide
is it does not show how many ready-to-build-on parcels or lots we have in the city. We
have just over 2,000 ready-to-build-on lots and what's important about that number is
that that is uncollected revenue that's sitting in the ground right now on the order of over
nine million dollars. So, as these lots get purchased and building permits get drawn, we
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will see that assessment revenue come back as, essentially, monies that we don't have
to -- we don't have to make any initial investment in. These will come straight back to
us. So, hopefully, as the economy continues to improve we will see more revenue on
that front. Nevertheless, despite what's going on in assessments, we have seen
continued and steady and stable growth in the utilities, both on the water and the
wastewater side. This slide shows account growth both in water and in sewer back to
2007 and as you can see it's very stable. What this shows is about two percent growth
per year in the utility. We can also see this growth and we plotted it against economic
indicators here, the Dow Jones Industrial Average. I have shown this slide several
years ago when we were talking about the fact that, essentially, water and sewer
services aren't really that impacted, if you will, by some of the economic conditions that
are out there. I mean they are to some degree, but this slide does, again, show that we
have been selling more and more water over and through these economic times. You
see the first one back in October -- the big dip October 1, October 2, that was the dot
com area and, then, of course, recently October 2008 up until, essentially, October
2010 we had that big valley there. But what you see is steady growth in water, gallons
distributed versus the economic climate and the same there is true when you plat that
against sewer or effluent slow growth as well. So, we know that the utility is expanding
and with expansion comes new challenges, not just in the continued growth, but with
the required investments to plan our infrastructure and to improve that infrastructure and
incorporate technologies, particularly requisite of impending regulatory changes and so
we will talk briefly about that today in our presentation. You have seen last October,
this is just a quick snapshot again updated to June of this year. Our financial
dashboard, if you will. I'm pleased to report that in just about every sector -- you know,
we have been doing this for years now -- just about every sector we have been able to
show marked improvement across the financial dashboard, with the minor exception of
annual system reinvestment. This is depreciation. And this is an area that we still need
to focus on, but it's not something that we should be alarmed or overly concerned about
right now, because most of our infrastructure as a community is within 25 to 30 years of
age and so we do have a little bit of time to work through that and we will be working
with the Finance Department to set that part up in the model and to also continue
modifying the way that we finance our replacements and repairs. So, let's talk about our
budget approach just really quickly. Across the Department we did incorporate a
number of philosophies and approaches in the generation of our budget. I wanted to
walk you through these just very quickly. First of all, absolutely it's essential that we
meet regulatory and safety requirements. We also want to preserve product and
service quality area and delivery levels. In addition -- oops. I got -- here we go. There
we go. We want to adequately protect and maintain infrastructure, use dollars to
appropriately fund staff training and the utilization and incorporation of technological
resources. Want to be conscientious of rates and I will talk with you about how this
budget impacts our rates and vice-versa in just a few slides, but we do want to bring
stability to what we do with regard to the rates. We are continuing to use a just in time
capital project financing model and Warren with speak to you briefly about what that's
done in engineering and how that has impacted what we have been able to do in
leveraging more projects with the same dollars and what that's also done is our carry
forward. We also wanted to incorporate performance based budgeting principles. You
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will see that today as well. And we wanted to also be very measured about our
expansion. We want to be very strategic in our expansion of strategic assets and
infrastructure. We have given apresentation -- actually, Tiffany gave a presentation a
couple of months back on the wastewater division, building improvements -- the facility
plant improvements that we have out there. We are very measured about these kinds
of things. We also did set aside as appreciation emergency operational and regulatory
reserves. We try to reduce costs where ever we could. We still understand the
economy, we still understand the pressures of the economy and the pressures at home
for people to cover essential services, like water and sewer. So, we have been
conscientious of that. We wanted to maximize our operational efficiencies where ever
we could and that has helped bring about some improvements in reductions of cost.
We want to ask only for what's needed. And you will see in our budget this year, as in
years past, you won't see a bunch of wants. You will see essential needs for the most
part. We also want to empower our budget stewards and you will hear from them today
and these are the people -- men and woman that are helping to bring about greater
accountability and improve budget performance and execution rates across the
department. You will hear from them in the presentation of some of their
enhancements. So, we are using this fund management strategy. I have talked with
you about this before, but what this shows, essentially, is the save-spend model. We
initially are collecting more revenues that are -- we have set aside and, then, we
eventually intend to draw on those and this is, of course, in alignment with the pay as
you go model and if you notice here at the bottom of the screen I did put what are
capital improvement dollars over five year increments. This is the last five years, the
upcoming five years, and the five years after that and what you will see is just as we
have predicted, we are going to be increasing the amount of money that we need for
capital improvements going forward. A lot of this is regulatorily driven. A lot of it is
actually upgrades, like facility plant improvements, as well as the treatment plant. And
also the incorporation of new technologies, like water treatment, which is something we
have talked with you in the past about and we are also going to propose as an
enhancement for this year. This is what the budget construction or capital looks like for
at least the last four years. As you can see we are beginning to spend more and that
trend will continue into the foreseeable future. The good news is we have planned for
this years ago and with that planning we have been able to stabilize rates and not
increase the rates, because we are working under the save-spend model. This shows
our budget detail with regard to enhancement history all the way back to 2007. The
numbers inside the bars are the number of enhancements we have and, then, the bars
themselves represent the total dollar amount of those enhancements and you can see
we have a pretty significant increase proposed for fiscal year '13. Nevertheless, we
were able to, in our operations, maintenance, and personnel line items reduce overall
operating costs and this has been done across the board. You can see Public Works
administration, that line item -- or that fund, rather, we are drawing down 18 percent this
year. In water we are going to see a reduction in operating of about three and a half
percent, 8.8 percent is wastewater. MUBs is increasing slightly to point -- or half a
percent if you will and so the total across the entire Enterprise Fund is a reduction close
to ten percent, 9.7 percent. It's probably a good time to remind you that last year we
were able to reduce operating expenses by 17 percent. So, in the last two years we
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have seen a reduction in operational costs through proposal of both this last year's
budget and this year's budget of over 25 percent and we are pretty pleased with that.
Nevertheless, we are an expensive utility. We have a lot of expensive equipment and
infrastructure and it takes a lot to keep the utility running. But in summary this is what
the fund balances looks like. Now, two numbers were transmitted to you by the Finance
Department. This is one of the numbers and this shows that we are expecting to
receive around close to 24 million dollars of revenue and that our budget is set for
around 29 million dollars, so that shows about a six million dollar deficit, if you will, as it
relates to revenues. But I will remind you that the majority of that, actually 6.3 million of
that is a depreciation set aside, which we don't draw on and we have talked about this in
the past. So, the reality is that our budget looks really like this when we talk about true
expenses. We will be taking in close to about 24 million in revenue as projected and we
will be spending almost 23 million. So, we do expect to post about a million dollars of
positive gains to the fund and that's important to keep in mind as we go. So, we do
have a balanced budget as it relates to true and actual expenditures, because that
depreciation set aside is just that, it's a set aside that we don't draw on. Okay. So, very
quickly how does our budget this year relate to the rate model? I always like to come
back to the rate model, because we set rates or we review them in February or March.
As you know this year we did not need a rate increase, did not recommend, and as we
have talked in the past, our rates are stabilized and using this model, as we have in the
past, we have come out of that big swing down and now we are seeing more or less
some pretty stable projections going forward. Our reserves are fully funded. That was
a request that you made of us several years ago, so we do have those four reserves
fully set aside. We are going to begin drawing on the regulatory reserve. We did talk
about that a few months ago for the lab building and other components that are
regulatorily driven. But, again, that's the reason we plan and we save in advance for
those types of infrastructure. So, in summary, we do want to just touch on the fact that
our budget is consistent with the rate model. We do have an aggressive management
of our budget and we have emphasized reducing O and M costs, again, almost ten
percent in this year's budget. We focused on improving our execution rate, both in
operations and in capital construction. You will hear a little bit about the capital
construction here in just a few minutes and, then, we have considered regulatory
requirements in this budget. We know that our NPDES permit is going to likely be
renewed here probably for the next 12 to 18 months. We are next on the list. We have
been told that we will probably be consulted later this year. So, we do need to be
prepared for what comes of that. We have also considered the depreciation eligible
assets and on making improvements and will continue to incorporate those
improvements as we go forward. And, lastly, as we are continuing to utilize continuous
process improvements across the department to try to drive lower costs and better
efficiencies. That's all I had to share with you as a primer for the start of our budget.
I'm going to turn it over to our budget stewards and each of them will come up and
present various enhancements that they have. I know this can sometimes be
cumbersome for you. On the one hand it's nice that you don't have to listen to one
person the entire time. On the other hand, it can be a little bit disruptive as we change
different staff members in and out. But I think it's important for our staff members to
meet with you and talk with you about what it is that they are doing and share with you
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the important work that they are involved in and it also is a nice opportunity for them to
get this kind of experience and -- and prepare them for whatever may come in their
futures with regard to careers. So, with that I will turn it over to Public Works
administration division, who is going to be represented by John McCormick and then --
we have got a couple of enhancements there. We will turn it over to Mollie Mangerich,
our environmental division manager, and she will talk about a couple environmental
division enhancements and, then, we will move on to engineering and operations after
that. Thank you very much.
McCormick: Okay. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, good morning. I will be
speaking to three announcements -- or three enhancements this morning and, then, we
will turn it over to Mollie for the remainder of this portion of the presentation. The first
enhancement is for an administrative support person to provide administrative support
to the environmental services division, the construction division, and the Public Works
division specifically in the area of records retention for Public Works as a department
and, then, for helping provide assistance to the environmental services group for their
policies and programs, as well as providing administrative support for the construction
inspection activities that is becoming a much larger portion of their responsibilities. This
position is funded with two part-time positions that are currently in the budget, which we
are not going to use and so we are proposing to reallocate those funds, it's apart-time
mechanic and apart-time pretreatment inspector, and allocate those funds to fund this
particular position and this will, then, give us the support that we need to achieve the
goals and requirements around the records retention policies, as well as providing
ongoing support that's needed by these other two divisions. Some of that support was
lost when we did the consolidation of the development services group with planning and
created the community development group. They occupied the area downstairs. We
moved the environmental services area upstairs and, of course, there is no one there to
provide any interface with outside departments or the public as they interact with those
departments. The next position is a safety administrator position. We have a very
robust safety program in Public Works. We have a number of our personnel that are
exposed to hazards as they work in the field or work in the operations at the wastewater
treatment plant or the water facility, but we also have people that are in the office area
that also go out to the field to do work and this enhancement is to hire afull-time person
in order to manage and direct those safety efforts to insure that we are in compliance
with our policies and our requirements around that, that we have a good strong program
integrity as it relates to training, that people have the standard training that is needed in
order for them to do their job safety and to be aware of the hazards that exist in their
work environment. Currently we provide these support services through an out sourcer,
who comes with a cost and we are proposing to partially fund this position with
eliminating those costs that we get -- that we pay to the out sourcer and, then, also the
rest of the funding would come through improvements in our budget and other areas
and some of that will become evident as you hear other presentations as to where that
funding would come from. This person, then, would be also responsible for not only
directing the safety program, but also directing the safety committee, which meets
monthly, is responsible for the health and safety manual that they were involved in
producing and this is the person that would be engaged in the implementation of the
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policies and practices and procedures associated with that health and safety manual.
Then, finally, we have a fairly large training conference room upstairs in the Public
Works Department. It is not adequately outfitted at this time, never has been, with
audio-visual equipment that is fairly typical in a conference room. We do a tremendous
amount of meetings and training events in that conference room and it is just very
important for us to have something that is available to us on demand built into the room
itself, so that we have that as part of a system that we can just walk into and get service
from immediately, as opposed to having to round up components and try to figure out
how they work and many of them are ancient to begin with, so they don't interact with
the technology that we -- that we need. This would certainly, then, provide us with that
capability and this is a room that is shared, so other departments use this room, as well
as we do, and it's something that I think is badly needed and we would propose that.
So, with that in mind I will turn it over to Mollie for her enhancements.
De Weerd: Council, do you have any questions for John at this time?
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Going back to the safety administrator one. John, on the sheet it talked about
the contract method -- I think you're spending 31,000 a year, is not effective in meeting
department's goals. I mean full time versus contracting is one of those things we are
always looking at as a way to save money, but yet getting the job done. What is it about
the contract method that's not meeting the department's goals?
McCormick: Well, there is a couple of things. First of all, I think it's the quality of service
that we get from the current vendor, so an alternative would be to look for a different
vender, you know, that would provide the same service. The other is the service itself is
not sufficient to meet the demand that we have for training and he is -- he is available to
us on a -- like apart-time basis. We don't have anyone that is dedicated and committed
to safety programs for the city and specifically for the Public Works Department and I
think therein lies the difference between working with a contractor who is available on
their schedule or at a specified service level that you negotiate with. If we stay with the
same contractor or, for that matter, even engage a new contractor to meet the needs
that we have, would require more and more of their time. So, I would be presenting a
budget proposal of one sort or another to increase the funding for the safety program.
Hoaglun: Okay. Thank you, John
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
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Bird: How often is -- does wastewater and water have safety meetings? Because out in
the private world you -- your insurance requires you to have safety meetings once a
week and keep track of everything. Do we have that kind of stuff here now?
McCormick: We do. Thank you, Councilman Bird. We do have safety meetings. In
fact, the committee chair is from the water department -- at water division, excuse me,
and they occur monthly. I think on an event basis they would occur more frequently.
Certainly safety is always talked about in the operations world, especially at staff
meetings and that sort of thing. They do report on matrix that relate to the incident rate
and the severity of that through time loss. We have been very fortunate to have very
safety conscious people working in those operations and -- but, yes, they do meet
frequently.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Not to mess with the current flow going on, but John mentioned to me earlier
that he might be able to answer a few more questions that we had yesterday about the
backup power needs for this building and I don't know if that's appropriate to do while
he's standing here or at the end of today's meeting or -- did anybody have any further
questions they wanted to ask him about that?
Bird: I didn't.
De Weerd: I think there is more questions, but why don't we do it under the discussion
part, if you will be around.
McCormick: I will stay for that. Yes.
De Weerd: Okay.
Zaremba: Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you, David. I mean Mr. Zaremba.
Rountree: Same guy.
Mangerich: Good morning, Madam Mayor, Council President and Council Members.
This is the environmental division portion of the enhancement request for the fiscal year
'13 budget. David Miles is our service water program administrator and he and I will be
tag teaming this series of enhancement requests. Beginning with our first enhancement
number four, we are seeking to replace the conference tables and chairs that were
moved from the conference room during the reorganization to planning and building
safety. Both the environmental division and our construction division currently utilized
this conference room for professional meetings with external entities and this
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enhancement seeks to replace these temporary folding tables and chairs with a
conference table of more to the liking of the one on the left, which was the one that used
to be in that room.
Miles: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, enhancement number five is for a city
wide irrigation system. This enhancement for a feasibility study would utilize similar
existing municipal irrigation systems, such as the city of Nampa's, and would analyze
the opportunities, the challenges, the costs, and the structure of a similar type of
irrigation citywide system that the city could maintain and administer. Nampa-Meridian
Irrigation District and Settlers Irrigation District, which are two of our larger irrigation
districts in our city, have engaged the city and shown interest in this type of system.
They have also expressed a favorable reaction and experience with similar systems like
the city of Nampa's. The feasibility study would review all things, such as water right
issues, legal, political and legislative issues. We also review and analyze structural and
cost issues, as well as engineering, operation, and maintenance issues, to attempt to
determine whether or not a more reasonable and favorable rate model could be
established for all rate payers, as well as determine if there is a method -- or a chance
to utilize and broaden -- offset those costs to our rate payers.
De Weerd: So, David, would that help with some of our flood plain challenges --
Miles: It could.
De Weerd: -- with the irrigation districts?
Miles: Madam Mayor, Council Members, it certainly could. I think that the feasibility
study is sort of the first step to see what the opportunities and impacts might be to a
system like that and if it gets down that line the opportunity for the city to manage that
type of system -- those canals and creeks that are out there that are utilized for
irrigation, could then, as you said, make it easier on the flood plain regulations in terms
of having one less agency that is involved in the mix of flood plain regulations.
De Weerd: Just one other question. Would that also mean they would not be dredging
the creeks or -- oh, excuse me, waterways. Whatever I'm supposed to call them. They
are not creeks. Would they still be maintaining those or -- because we would kind of be
administering the program would we be more responsible for the maintenance of those
waterways?
Miles: I think the intention of the study is to examine whether or not --
De Weerd: All of these questions.
Miles: All of those questions would be part of that study and whether or not it makes
sense to incorporate those types of activities to this city as part of that program.
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De Weerd: Well, certainly I think that if -- if we would include that as part of that study,
so we could be more in charge of those waterway amenities and what they look like and
how they flow and what they look like in our city limits that would be good. Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: David, originally when -- this was included in the book. There was a 50,000
dollar study and, then, a hundred thousand dollar study. What changed in that? Just
the overall scope or enlarging the scope of the study?
Miles: Madam Mayor, Councilman Hoaglun, essentially, what we have learned over the
dealing with some other water right issues over the past year is that we felt like 50,000
dollars probably would not give us a complete and robust study to make an informed
decision relating to the costs that we have spent already on some other water rights
issues. It seemed indicative to up the amount to cover the cost that will be incurred.
We envision a lot of internal work, but also a lot of the complexity with the water rights
issues and state laws and things of that nature will require consultants and can require
a large amount of time as well.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor and David, to follow up, you know, one of the things that I'm
puzzled about is Nampa-Meridian and Settlers, they have the taxing authority and we
don't and how is that going to work? I mean that's a change in state law -- I mean there
is a whole -- it is very complex and I want good information to make an informed
decision, but at the same time I hate spending 100,000 dollars if I'm thinking we are not
going to do this and so that's my quandary here is I don't know where I stand on this,
because I want to have more information, but to get more information we need to spend
lots of money. So, that's always a -- you know. So, that's always a tough deal. To
continue on, my question -- Nampa -- they have several irrigation districts. Do they --
do all the irrigation -- do they oversee all irrigation water within their city limits or only
through some of the irrigation districts, like Nampa-Meridian? Do you know that?
Miles: Madam Mayor, Councilman Hoaglun, I do not know specifically. Perhaps if Mr.
Barry knows he could address it, but I believe that they do control within their city the
irrigation delivery through their irrigation system citywide.
De Weerd: Mr. Nary -- I mean Barry.
Barry: Thank you, Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: Barry, Nary, whatever.
Barry: Yeah. You know. We both talk a lot.
De Weerd: You know, I was going to say that and I thought no.
Barry: Thank you for your question. Two points there. The first one is my
understanding, as I recall when we met with Mr. Fuse -- Michael Fuse, who is the public
works director for the city of Nampa, two years ago or so, in talking about this concept
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when he were evaluating it, that they do control all of the irrigation for the city of Nampa,
including Pioneer's portion, Nampa-Meridian's portion and any others, for that matter.
The point that you made, Mr. Hoaglun, about the cost, we agree completely. The cost
does seem high, but we don't know what we are getting into. Our goal is not to spend
100,000 dollars. Originally we thought we might be able to do this between 40 and 60,
but as we looked more to it and looked at the potential issues surrounding it and, in
particular, recent experience with attorneys, that dollar amount just seemed a little bit
low. So, we are requesting 100,000 dollars with the hope of not having to spend that. I
would say maybe the encouraging component of this is that we do seem to have
support, in concept, by our two largest irrigation providers. If that didn't exist, then, I
would say it's a lot more risky, but because we have been approached, actually, by both
of them on their own about this particular concept and have been encourage to
investigate it, we feel that working together with them and also incorporating assistance
from the city of Nampa, we might be able to make this a reality. The important piece to
this is making sure that we work the bugs out through a feasibility study. We identify all
the bugs and we try to work them out as much as we can in advance of moving this
thing forward. But we don't do anything until after we get the information and present it
back to you, so -- I don't know if that helps or not, but --
Hoaglun: It does, Tom. Of course, then, there is the part where it's kind of like my
brother-in- law wanting to sell me a car, kind of like, hey, I got a good deal for you, you
kind of -- it makes you a little worrisome. But, anyway, I appreciate that information.
That is helpful. Thanks.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: I have the same concerns when I look at this item given our past experience
and I can see why the irrigation districts might very well want to offload what it is they
have. I also have been a resident for a number of years and know the cost of using
potable water to irrigate with versus using irrigation water. It seems to me that maybe
we ought to do this in increments or a phase and the first phase ought to be is it really
going to be feasible for the city to take over this rather cumbersome and patchwork
system that we have and continue to have rates that the folks are paying now that do
get irrigation water. It's pretty minimal on an annual basis. And I have some degree of
difficulty seeing the city take on the entire system and having to provide a system for the
rest of the city that doesn't have this and still maintain those rather low rates that those
people pay. I just have that concern and I think we will spend a lot of money and we
might say alittle -- those that have it are going to be subsidizing those that don't and
that's not going to fly very well either, so --
Barry: Madam Mayor, if I could respond. Councilman Rountree, that's exactly the point
of the study. One of the concerns we have as we grow our reclaimed water program is
how are we going to finance that reclaimed water program. Should all rate payers pay
to finance the reclaimed water program and, then, in addition on the potable water side
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we do know that our potable water users for irrigation water are paying quite a bit of
money for irrigation water. Recent studies on our reclaimed water program have
indicated that we are not going to be able to reach the downtown area with reclaimed
water. It's just not possible. We don't have enough water production at the treatment
plant to do that. So, this type of a system would help us to develop a leveled payment
system, if you will. At least that's kind of the intent is to see if we can't develop through
devaluation of this type of system, the utilization of multiple water sources that are all
equalized and, therefore, paid uniformly across the entire city. That would mean
something to -- or some effect I would imagine that there would be a slight increase in
those who pay irrigation district water purveyors now at a significant reduction than
those who pay for potable water and, then, some sort of reimbursement of the
reclaimed water program. That's one of the intentions behind this is to see if we could
develop a system whereby there is one uniform irrigation rate and whereby we are
using and moving the best water for the best type of use across the city. Right now if
we do want to create a reclaimed water utility there is -- there is really no way we can
compete financially with the cost of that reclaimed water utility and we would yet create
another scenario where you have very low irrigation payments to an irrigation water
purveyor, fairly high for those using potable water and probably even higher for those
using reclaimed water. If we could under one system make more uniform the
application of rates across the entire city for the same use of water, we show that that
would be a benefit to all residents. But that was one of the questions we wanted to
evaluate here. If that's not something the Council is comfortable with, that is one of the
bigger motivators behind this and it probably would be good to get that conversation out
and discussed.
Rountree: Well, I think that's a valuable part of the study, but I think that's probably the
key part of the study as well, as opposed to venturing into the water rights issue and the
legalities of that and the cost of the investigation of doing all of that. To me the cost of
the investigation, not the fact that there is going to be costs other than that to do it. I
mean jumping through the legal hoops with a feasibility study would be the cost of
having that done. But if you do them both at the same study with the -- at the same
time and you can't figure out to how make the rates compatible and feasible, then, why
bother with the rest of the study.
Barry: Mr. Rountree, that would be exactly the approach we would use in the study and
we have used that approach successfully in the development of other studies. For
example, the reclaimed water master plan, whereby we will look at low hanging fruit and
sort of have a go, no go, decision or what we call an exit ramp, if you will, that way we
don't run up the bill on evaluating a bunch of questions that are not germane, because
there is a fundamental critical path flaw that keeps us from moving forward. So, that's
how we intend to move forward in this is to, essentially, address the low hanging, but
most important prioritized questions first and if those look favorable, then, to continue
the study through fruition or until otherwise it doesn't look fruitful. So, that would be the
approach with regard to management of this particular project we would utilize.
Hopefully that gives you some peace of mind.
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Rountree: Thank you.
De Weerd: Any other questions?
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor, just a comment in support. I mean we -- we conceded what
the questions are and how important the questions are. The study is a way to get those
questions and I'm -- my feeling is in a number of areas as the city grows and our needs
increase we do need to be considering these kind of things. And I fully understand that
even after the study the answer may be no, but at least we will have facts and figures to
make that decision on as well. So, I'm -- I'm in support of the study and I know it will be
done as efficiently and cheaply as possible.
De Weerd: Thank you. Okay.
Mangerich: Enhancement number six for the environmental division is -- seeks
approval for funding to develop four education outreach programs for this next fiscal
year, primarily targeting at the area of most concern within city's boundaries. Number
one, surface water pollutant reduction program. By leveraging our resources with the
clean -- partners for clean water in the larger Ada County area, looking primarily at
pollution prevention strategies outreach activities, reduction in phosphorus and fecal
coliform, both of which our creeks have listed efficiencies in. Secondly, looking at food
waste composting pilot program within a couple of our elementary schools who have
expressed interest in doing so, provided the purchase of two large worm bins going out
into our schools and having that activity take place during the school hours. So, there is
support of that by some of our teachers in our elementary schools. Thirdly, looking at
the hazardous waste disposal options available to the City of Meridian businesses,
there are affordable services and convenient services available that the education and
outreach to link our Meridian businesses with those services does not exist. The
funding would help enhance an outreach utilizing our industrial pretreatment program
with the over 640 businesses that we visit per year through that program and providing
information about where they can take their small business hazardous waste here in
Ada County for -- either for a free or low disposal cost. We think that's very important,
because we have a very robust household hazardous waste collection program here
within the city. And, then, finally this enhancement requests that we roll out and natural
yard and home care campaign will connect the primary pollutants that concern us in our
service water and ground water protection plans, pesticides, phosphorus, fecal coliform,
being able to show alternative partnering with vendors and local businesses within our
community and show options to use of hazardous waste is our homes and on our
residential landscapes. Thank you.
Miles: Madam Mayor, Council Members, enhancement number seven has been
withdrawn. This was originally for a FEMA letter of map revision for Nine Mile Creek
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and given the fact that FEMA has indicated they have begun their own study of the area
at this point in time, we decided that this would be better suited for future fiscal years
while we wait to see what FEMA's results will be.
De Weerd: David, is FEMA looking to expand that area?
Miles: They are not looking necessarily to expand the area. What they do on a kind of
rotating basis every five to ten years is they restudy the maps of flood hazard areas to
insure that they are accurate, as well as any -- incorporate any changes that have been
made in the areas over time, either through development or things that have not been
on the original flood insurance studies. So, this just happens to be part of the lower
Boise watershed remapping effort over the next two years and they had funding for Nine
Mile Creek at the time. We were apprised of this approximately six to eight weeks ago
in the middle of the discussion of this enhancement and which kind of threw a wrench in
the plan for this fiscal year.
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you.
Mangerich: And our final enhancement for the environmental division is requesting
funding for a proposed pilot project which would install a water bottle refill station along
our pathways. This pilot project we developed in partnership with our Parks and
Recreation Department and our water division. This enhancement would purchase and
install a water bottle refill station that could be used by our walkers, runners, dog
walkers, cyclists along a portion of our parkway. Working with parks and water division,
looking at the best and most feasible and cost effective location to place a pilot project
of this nature would be along our Bud Porter parkway. There is also a myriad of other
stanchions there of dog waste receptacles, benches, et cetera, linking up a couple of
our parks. So, we think that that would be a good location for which to bring this. The
equipment that we are looking at in manufactured MDS and it is a manufacturer that our
parks works with on several occasions for the procurement of their installations for a
myriad of equipment within our parks system. They have a good relationship, they
know the durability and the customer service with company and so they have
encouraged us to go with this provider in the selection of any water bottle refill station.
Conversations have also come up to include -- which this model can also incorporate is
a drinking fountain arm on this as well. So, it can service both those who are not using
a refillable water bottle, but also who would just like to have a drink along our park and
pathway. We believe that this enhancement is designed to underscore and promote our
Meridian livability factor. Also the growing fabulous network that we are developing in
our parks and pathway structures and amenities and also providing support to our
Meridian's water division is in support of a national water campaign to drink tap and to
reduce use of one time disposable plastic bottles. So, there is a water reduction drink
local, drink tap campaign component to this as well. And it is in concert with our city
comp plan, Chapter 5 in the Public Works Strategic Plan for public education. And that
includes our enhancements. We stand for additional questions if you have some.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
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De Weerd: Yes.
Hoaglun: Mollie, on this one, was it this -- and this was for the equipment and supplies
and installation. Is that something the Parks Department would be doing?
Mangerich: Installation would be both parks and water. Water line and because of the
this location of Bud Porter those would both be minimal costs.
Hoaglun: Okay. Thank you.
Mangerich: So, I worked with them to pull together this budget for that.
Hoaglun: Okay.
De Weerd: Any questions from Mollie or David?
Bird: I have none.
Rountree: No.
Mangerich: Thank you very much.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Mangerich: We are now going to hand this over to Warren Stewart, the city engineer,
and his staff with a series of enhancement for the engineering division.
De Weerd: Well, we will make sure to give them a hard time.
Mangerich: Thank you.
Public Works -Engineering
Stewart: Thanks, Mayor. I appreciate that. I'm grateful to be here, Madam Mayor,
Members of the Council, today to talk a little bit about some of the things that are going
on in the engineering department. Actually, the enhancements today will be presented
to you -- presented to you by the engineering and operations staff, but I'm going to have
a brief discussion with you about some of the other things that are going on that will lay
sort of a foundation or a framework for the enhancement discussions that they will have
with you. The engineering division gets involved in a variety areas, but we focus -- we
try to focus on the things that you see here on the slide. We work closely with the
operations department to insure that they have the infrastructure and the tools they
need to effectively meet and efficiently meet our regulatory requirements and serve our
community. This means teaming up with the water department to make sure that they
have -- or are able to provide -- I got to put my glasses on. I apologize. Adequate water
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quality and quantity to serve our citizens and meet our fire protection needs. It also
means teaming up with our wastewater department to insure that our sewer collection
system and our wastewater plant have the capacity to serve our growing community
and meet their regulatory requirements. Thanks to previous Council approval, we have
had and consistently use our water and sewer model, the plan for growth, and insure
that we have adequate capacity now and in the future. As you are aware, much of the
engineering division's day to day work revolves around managing capital improvement
design and construction and we are consistently striving to improve the means and
methods that we use for project delivery. This is being accomplished through a
combination of training process improvement and better coordination. We are
consistently striving not just to work on the day-to-day things that we will do, but also to
improve the way in which we do our work. The annual update of our capital
improvement plan helps us to revisit our strategy for meeting the city's needs each year.
We have also completed or nearly completed master plans for all the major components
of our sewer, water, reclaimed water and communication system. These plans are
critical in helping us to identify capital improvement and the timelines needed for those
capital improvements. We have also been actively involved in several committees
within these -- to improve the way we deliver capital projects and we have worked within
these committees, as well as independently, to create SOPs and process flows to
document and streamline our processes. Thanks again to the Council's support we are
currently implementing e-Builder Project Management System and this system will help
us to greatly improve many areas of capital project management and delivery. We are
also undertaking an update of our City of Meridian supplemental specifications and the
creation of design guidelines which will aid our customers in doing business with the
City of Meridian. We are also planning to create a project management guidance
document to help city staff do the complex process of capital project management.
Some of the benefits of these and other Public Works efforts have netted some positive
results. As Tom alluded to earlier, carry forward dollars have been on a downward
trend for the last several years. In large part this is a result of the just in time financing
model which was implemented in 2009, which allows us to better leverage the funding
that we have available. And as expected we are beginning to reach a point where the
improvements are smaller and more difficult. As you can see we are sort of flattening
out at the bottom of this. But I'm confident that we will continue to make additional
gains, although they may be smaller than in the past. Some of the carry forward
improvements can also be attributed to the fact that our project budget execution rate is
improving. Since 2009 we have achieved, excuse me, significant improvement on a
year-to-year basis. The national average for public works execution is around 53
percent and as you can see we are substantially better than the national average. Our
year-to-date execution rate is around 60 percent, but the most significant construction
expenditures will occur over the next two and a half months and I'm confident we will
end the year in excess of 60 percent. And I believe we will actually meet or exceed our
last year's mark in spite of our skeptics. We have also been generating -- sorry. Got to
get back on that. On average our change order values have been less than one
percent of the overall costs of construction and I'm very proud of this statistic and my
staff for achieving that. We have also been generating and following project schedules
for the past couple of years and we have done a better job of meeting our project
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schedules and timelines and we have made solid improvements in our communication
and coordination with other departments. Once again I would like to say thanks to the
Mayor and Council for giving us the support to implement the e-Builder Project
Management System and I believe it will be a great tool in helping us to achieve the
improvements that we need in providing the data that we need to track what we are
doing and to report that information to not only the Council, but also other people within
the city. And with that I will stand for any questions or I will introduce Tiffany Floyd, who
is also going to be talking a little bit about some of the operation things that are going
on.
De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Bird: I have none.
Stewart: Thank you.
Floyd: Need to lower those, uh. For the shorter folks in the room.
De Weerd: You even wore heels.
Floyd: I did. Good morning, Madam Mayor and Members of the Council. Well, I have
finished my first year as utilities operations manager and I thought it would be nice to
share some of the business improvements we have made in both divisions. So, to
continue with Warren's theme working on the business, not -- not just in the business, I
will share what we have been up to last year and what our priorities and challenges are
going to be looking into the future. It's still a little high for me. Excuse me. Over the
past both divisions have instituted regularly scheduled operational meetings with our
division partners. This includes construction division where we look to understand
water and wastewater projects, the needs of those projects, and the timelines. We also
meet with our environmental division to coordinate pretreatment and surface water
activities. We also work closely with our utility billing department to coordinate our
water billing needs and services, plus help both divisions understand and gain a better
understanding of the roll and the responsibilities of both divisions. Lastly, as Warren
said, we coordinate with our engineering division on our activities dictated by the
various plans that he mentioned and insure corroboration on our CIP implementation.
asset management. About two years ago Hansen was implemented as the asset
management and inventory control system for Public Works. It originated in our
wastewater division and the water division implementation is currently underway. There
are many reasons why asset management is important and I'm sure that you have
heard a number of them, but I will cover a few as well. We want to track our
infrastructure as far as the life cycle costs are concerned, the timing of installation and,
then, of course, the warranties associated with that infrastructure. Hansen also has an
inventory module that allows us to track equipment and monitor it to insure that we have
on hand materials and supplies for say service orders or any emergency-type situations
we need to address. On a more technical note, we do continue to develop our SCADA
and remote site communications throughout the utilities. We are in the process of
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finalizing that SCADA master plan that you probably heard much about, which will help
dictate the current and future standardization of our equipment and the programming
that we need. This master plan will also secure the communication transmission
between our central locations, such as water and wastewater and, of course, City Hall
with our remote sites, such as the PRVs or lift stations. In the more recent months we
have been utilizing performance matrix in our divisions to know how we are doing, what
types of things we need to be focusing on. We also use benchmarking measures,
which help us track and compare to industry standards, again, trying to figure out where
we maybe need to make some improvements or we need to focus our efforts. We do
that on a quarterly basis to track along with the budget. And last, but certainly not least,
I wanted to be sure to include a current budget snippet, as Warren did, total
expenditures for both water and wastewater year to date are really for us -- or at least
for myself in the last year at an all-time high. We are executing 89 percent of our
budgets and so I feel very good about how we are doing and I think it's a pretty darn
good job. Jump ahead too quickly. Okay. So, let's take a look at both divisions and
their future priorities, starting with wastewater. As you know, MPDES permit
negotiations will soon be upon us, as we are expecting to see our permit in late 2012
into 2013, as Tom described earlier, which means we need to continue to evaluate our
-- any and all of our compliance strategies, which includes various phosphorus removal
options, evaluating the role and the scope of our reclaimed water program and, then,
also looking at alternative means to effluent disposal. We have heard in recent
conversations with Boise in their NPDES permit that we may have year around
phosphorus limits versus the seasonal limits that we had been expecting, so this may
impact our reclaimed water program as we are not able to currently discharge that water
all year long due to the reuse permit. Then as for alternative means of effluent disposal,
we do plan to evaluate aquifer recharge viability. You will soon hear from staff on an
enhancement to fund the site specific aquifer recharge study, again, to determine
viability and, hopefully, avoid any additional upgrade at our wastewater treatment plant.
Next we will look at optimizing our BNR process, certainly as much as possible. We
have recently started modifying the secondary pump station, which we talked a little bit
about last week and, then, reconfiguring the return activated sludge line. That is in an
effort to reduce the microthrix caused issues that I know you have heard much about as
well. Fermentation is another project that we will look to reduce phosphorus levels, but
it will also allow us to increase our biological reliability, again focusing on the process
that we have. And, then, lastly, is the chemical feed flocculation project. It's going to
reduce the acridity issues, but will also improve the phosphorus and removal of that
phosphorus. The last item there in support facility improvements. If you recall that in
May I spoke to you about the wastewater improvement plan and the needs analysis as
we looked forward 20 to 30 years and what the need may be not only now, but into the
future. It was determined that wastewater had outgrown its support facilities and that
certainly some improvements were needed. One was the current laboratory. It's
presently undersized. It cannot really accommodate for future analytical equipment or
what we see as the future analytical equipment that we would need to respond to the
NPDES permit. Certainly with that permit in the horizon we feel that our lab sampling
work will nearly triple. We talked a little bit about the sampling numbers that we are
seeing now at 9,600, roughly, to maybe 30,000 samples in trying the meet the NPDES
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permit. So, we feel that we need to be as prepared as possible for that. We also need
to retrofit our existing administration building to accommodate our team of operators
and our collection staff. As you saw last week on the tour, it, too, is undersized for
current staffing needs. So, however, in order to retrofit certainly the existing building we
need to build a new administration building, thereby giving us an opportunity to plan
and, then, build a facility that will provide for staff now and, then, into the future, as well
as for our community. And, finally, the sampling site improvements, which I would like
to think as the fun one. On the tour last week you saw that. I like to call it a diving
board, because that's what it looks like to me. We would like to improve that to allow
staff to take a representative sample, but more importantly it is a safety concern and
staff do take samples throughout the wintertime and that is and can be very difficult.
Now, moving into water and its priority objective. First of all, water treatment and
addressing customer concerns that we have talked about with you all. Brown water
issues, as well as insuring that we are protecting our water supply. Both the
engineering team and the water staff have evaluated both the use of the chlorine within
our water system to prevent contamination and in the formation of brown water, or at
least if that's what causes that. They have determined that installing an absorption
filtration system would be both effective in protecting our water supply, but more
importantly removing the iron and manganese which is creating the brown water and
improving our water quality. This system requires low maintenance and the filter media
lasts over 20 years or at least that's what I have been told. So, I guess we will see.
With that I believe we could focus our efforts on zone two. That was that Well 21 again
that we saw last week, which is in the center part of town. This will be our first attempt
and trying to address the iron and manganese though, and removing it from our system.
Next is water quality. We have seen some trace amounts of uranium in two of our
wells, requiring us to install a few test well to determine the best water quality that we
have and trying to address that with design and construction of new or say replacement
wells. With that information we think we will be able to sort of screen off the best water
quality and, then, utilize it, which would, basically, reduce or eliminate the uranium from
our drinking water. Another primary objective of our water division is the storage
capacity. Meridian is short on water storage and our water master plan addresses that.
It's known that we need to increase the storage and our pumping capacity in the
southern part of our town, which, you, again, are very familiar with, to address peaking
and fire flow demands. Staff will seek an enhancement on the new water reservoir and
the details associated with that here in a little bit. Protection of our source water is also
critical. We must think about well design and well construction and well head
protection. One way we are doing that is through a collaborative effort between
Department of Water Resources, Association of Idaho Cities, so AIC, and with other
water purveyors to address a number of things, private well construction, abandonment
requirements and, then, trying to identify any well hazards that may exist and trying to
address those through better design or better design standards or requirements. Lastly,
as you may know, we recently converted all of our water meters to the radio reads or
known as AMR, the automatic meter reading technology. You may also recalled some
discussion about AMI and the automatic meter infrastructure. What the AMI technology
is -- you know, would allow us to -- to go from the once a month drive by readings,
which we are now, while utilizing the AMR, to an hourly realtime reading is not yet fully
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developed. So, we have elected to place the AMI part of this on hold and utilize our
AMR technology first. We will continue, of course, to research and monitor any new
and upcoming metering options, but for now I think we are very excited about the AMI
technology and that seems to be working well for us. Now, as I close I would like to
summarize what you will hear from staff in regards to our budget enhancements for the
upcoming year. For wastewater there are 17 enhancements for a total of 8.9 million
dollars. And, then, for water we have 16 enhancements for a total of seven million
dollars. I'm happy to stand for questions or certainly I can turn it over to our wastewater
division and we will start with budget enhancements. Staff will present a number of
those to you.
De Weerd: Council, do you have any questions for Tiffany at this time?
Bird: I have none.
Rountree: No. Thank you.
Floyd: Thank you.
De Weerd: Okay. Mr. Nary, are we -- what I would like to do is if I could take a few
minutes break and -- if you guys would, please, have a seat for a moment. As you
know we have our city picnic tonight and tonight we did not have -- our employee of the
year cannot make tonight's picnic, so we thought we would take an opportunity right
now to present our 2012 employee of the year award and I see that person in the room,
so certainly our 2012 employee of the year has been a face in the Mayor's office -- oh,
dang it. I think Brad needs to do this. But I will at least hand out the award. How about
that.
Hoaglun: Well, this employee, who is the 2012 employee of the year, does bring a
positive presence to the City, into the Mayor's book club, family fishing day, they are a
positive helpful individual. When anyone has an issue or concern for the city, they jump
right on it. They have been a great resource to our citizens and -- and certainly an
example of the Meridian Way and the city is more connected because of their work,
they really go above and beyond to get things done and make sure that our citizens are
well served and they do it in a way that they don't look for -- they don't do this to bring
back attention on themselves, they do it because that's what they want to do and make
sure citizens like this community like their government and make sure they get the
information needed and -- but today we are going to make sure that person gets the
recognition that's due them and I think, Mayor, I will let you announce our 2012
employee of the year and -- you want me to go ahead and announce that? Oh. Our
2012 employee of the year from the Mayor's office is Shelly Houston.
Houston: Oh, my gosh. Hi, guys. How are you doing? This is a surprise. I saw my
mom and dad in back and I was like -- oh, thank you. We have a good time, don't we?
So, thank you for -- I love my job and everything I get to do and you guys are always
there for me and -- but we got to keep things fun around here and the Mayor is great to
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work with and I love the Council and everybody. My coworkers are incredible. I have
been going through some health issues with my asthma and you see me with an
oxygen tank like an old grandpa, so -- I got some bad news from the doctor today, so
I'm going to be still wheezing and huffing a little bit. You take care of me. My mom and
dad -- I couldn't do anything without them. Just yesterday -- what was it yesterday -- I
think my fire alarm on the highest beam was chirping out loud, so poor dad he saved
me from the ladder. They help me take care of my house and yard so that I can take
care of what we need to do here at work and so I appreciate everybody and I probably
won't be to the picnic tonight, because of the -- mostly the heat and breathing is not my
best event. So, anyway, thank you for helping me get through all this and this is a great
surprise and I'm very tickled. Thank you.
De Weerd: We appreciate Luke coming by. He was our decoy. And Shelly really fell
for it, too.
Houston: I did. I'm like what were they thinking.
De Weerd: You know, Shelly has been here for a long time and certainly she adds a
great dimension to coming to work, making people smile, putting a positive face on the
City of Meridian and, you know, it's -- if anyone builds trust in city government it's Shelly.
It's her smile and her presence in a room that make us look good and certainly make
coming to work really fun. So, we appreciate you, Shelly.
Houston: Thank you.
De Weerd: Okay. If you guys want to take it outside. Enough of the touchy Feely stuff.
We got work to do. Thank you for letting us take a moment to recognize Shelly. We
greatly appreciate that. And keeping in the norm, I have to get emotional about those
things, so I apologize for that, too. But thank you, Councilman Hoaglun, for stepping in
so adequately.
De Weerd: Okay. Come on team.
Crane: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, it's great to be with you and I really
appreciate the moment of levity before we stand in front of you and ask for 8.9 million
dollars. But, hopefully, that was actually a good thing. We will go ahead and start in the
wastewater division with the capital replacements, since we have three. The first one I
talked to you a little bit about on the tour is the washer compactor on one of our effluent
screens. During routine maintenance they had found that someone had went through it
-- wore right through that casing of the press mechanism. It has been temporarily
welded back together so that it's still functional. We had FPS Water Engineering do a
little study for us to see if it made sense to just replace that or look at other equipment,
maybe newer, bigger, better and the tech memo concluded that direct replacement at
this point was the preferred course of action. This one is sort of important. It has a six
month lead time, so we would really like to get it on the way before our temporary patch
fails. The second one is for a new waste gas burner. The one that's at the plant now
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has been in service for -- and burning continuously for about 12 years. The real issue
was it was -- back when we had to put it in we didn't have the air permit that we have
now and the air permit requires a thermal couple for continuous monitoring and also a
pilot for re-ignition. Although it has a pilot it's fairly old and it's like a once inch gas line
and so the -- and the thermal couple -- our staff has installed a temporary thermal
couple, but it burns out every few months, so the newer ones have a more efficient pilot
system and we need to have an engineered solution, really, for the thermal couple. The
last one is the HVAC unit on gas number one. I pointed it out as well on the tour. It's
been in service for approximately six years sitting over that tank. It has significant
corrosion and the service reps have recommended replacement. The whole HVAC unit
was upgraded in 2009, but the project didn't include the air handler, because it was
working at that time. So, following the HVAC replacement, that's going to be essentially
all new. So, with that I can stand for any questions on the capital replacement.
De Weerd: Questions on the capital replacements?
Rountree: Great. Steve.
Jensen: Now we will get into the enhancements. We have 17. Two of which have
been withdrawn, because those funds have been moved into the base budget, so we
won't have to continuously come and ask every year. And we will start with
enhancement number one, which is fermentation. This project is the second part of a
three year project. It was funded -- the first design part was funded in FY-12. The
enhancement provides for a conversion of one of the old primary and the digester and
one old digester and two fermentation allows us to take advantage of that space that it
occupies and use some of the existing infrastructure. To remove nitrogen and
phosphorus biologically a simple carbon based food source is required. We call it VFA's
or volatile fatty acids. The volatile fatty acids can be produced by the fermentation
process. Studies that we have done have shown that our nutrient removal capacity is
limited by the fact -- by our carbon source that we have, meaning that if we have more
VFAs we can remove more soluables and phosphorus biologically. So, the principles of
natural selection apply in our biological system and the aeration basin it's basically
survival of the fittest. So, by assuring a consistent food source for the VFAs we can
actually increase the reliability of the biological system. But as you might imagine
fermentation is high aromatic -- some might say it stinks. So, odor control will be
required for this particular project, but the odor control is apart of a separate
enhancement that we will discuss shortly. Enhancement number two is the second part
of the secondary pump station modifications. The first part of this project was approved
in fiscal year '12 for 825,000 dollars. We are asking for this funding to complete
construction of the improvements related to reducing the potential for the formation of
microthrix in the wastewater system. Microthrix causes a lot of settleability problems,
which impact capacity of the secondary treatment system. This enhancement has the
potential to not only increase capacity of the secondary treatment system, but also
reduce chemical costs. Enhancement number three -- it's a continuation of ongoing
enhancement that we had requested for several years for flow monitoring. This
enhancement will not only fund the purchase of flow meters if we need to go that
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direction, it also will fund a flow monitoring program where we have a systematic
approach for going around the collection system, monitoring flows, so that we can nail
down the source of the infiltration and in flow in the collection system and this will allow
us to prioritize areas to go over with our TV crew to look at the collection system and,
then, fix the areas where we find infiltration and flow, which results in direct capacity
gains at the wastewater treatment plant.
Crane: So, the next enhancement is chemical feed flocculation tanks. This is the
second and final part of the chemical feed flocculation project. The purpose -- this is to
design and install flocculation tanks just to the south of the chemical feed building bulk
station that's being built now. Flocculation is going to be essential for removing future
phosphorus after we get out as much of it as we can we -- the particles are too small to
get caught on our filters, so you flocculate them and make them big enough to get
caught on the filter. The project also has additional benefits as we coagulate things and
make those particles bigger we will be able to capture more of those particles and it will
have a net benefit for our turbidity requirements on the reclaimed water, which will give
us a mechanism to hopefully make the turbidity a little less onerous. It's a very strict
turbidity limit of two, which can be tough to meet at times, so this will help us if we have
elevated turbidity like we had when we were out on Friday, it will help us add a chemical
and flocculate and make those suspended particles big enough to get caught on our
filters.
Dolsby: Enhancement number five is for sewer main replacement. This is an ongoing
enhancement as well to rehab, replace, and repair sewer mains in the city. Not only will
this fund replacement projects that are identified by the camera crew, we also -- projects
of note for fiscal year '13 that make this enhancement quite a bit larger than last year
would be split corridor phase two, as well as a high priority project, the 8th Street
improvements that are identified for fiscal year '13. Enhancement number six is for
sewer line extensions. This enhancement will fund -- typically fund sewer line
extension, new sewer mains that are associated with ACHD projects. In fiscal year '13
this funding is identified for the Franklin Road, Ten Mile to Linder project to put in the
sewer utilities related to that project. That project was originally scheduled for fiscal
year'12, but it's since been postponed to '13, so we are asking for this funding again for
fiscal year'13. Enhancement number seven for a manhole survey has been withdrawn
and incorporated into the base budget.
Crane: Enhancement number eight is odor control and believe it or not some folks think
the wastewater plant stinks. I don't know. Specifically, this portion of it would provide
the odor control facilities that are essential to the fermentation project and, basically,
one project can't be done without the other. We have to have odor control to implement
fermentation. But this -- the reason it's a separate stand-alone project is that it's -- it's
designed in a base so that it will be expandable to the headworks, so the first thing that
it would do is it would accommodate the fermentation and take care of those odors, but
the design is such that as the -- there is a couple more headworks improvements that
need to be made and once those improvements are done, then, the headworks, which
recent study a couple years ago identified the headworks as the largest source of odors.
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So, once we get the headworks improvements completed, then, it would be hooked into
this odor control facility as well.
Dolsby: Enhancement number nine is for SCADA system upgrades. The result of our
SCADA master plan has identified new radios, as well as antennas and other systems
that we need to purchase for our remote and base stations. This enhancement is to
complete construction of the upgrades to the remote and the base stations to make our
system more reliable and robust.
Ball: Wastewater division enhancement number ten is for the sampling station
improvements. This enhancement will allow us to evaluate, design, and construct
improvements to our Five Mile downstream NPDES required sampling site. Our current
sampling station is located too far above Five Mile Creek to easily collect a truly
representative sample, especially in the wintertime during low flow conditions. It also
poses a safety risk to staff if they have to go down the banks to collect samples. Our
new NPDES permit will have more frequent ambient sampling required. It will require
more types of analyses that require precise collection techniques, such as oil and
grease, low level metals, and bacteria. Again, this enhancement will allow us to
complete the necessary improvements that we need for our sampling site to allow staff
to safely take the most representative and accurate sample as possible. Wastewater
division enhancement number 11 is for the lab building extension. This is phase one of
a two year project to design and construct a critically needed expansion to our
wastewater laboratory. We are already currently 400 square feet undersized for the
needs of today. We are lacking critical infrastructure, such as ventilation and plumbing
for an acid washing station, which is critical to run low level phosphorus. We are also
lacking the equipment to run the low -- ultralow level phosphorus and ammonia
analyses. As Tiffany mentioned, with our new NPDES permit our testing frequency will
increase by a large amount. Almost a threefold increase. So, with this lab extension we
will be better able to meet the demands of our new NPDES permit. We will be able to
run more analyses in house at a cost savings to the city. We will also have more control
in the quality assurance and turnaround time of our lab samples and it will give us a
potential for future in-house analytical work, which could include significant industrial
contributors to the city and also the potential to test the drinking water samples for the
city. And wastewater division enhancement number 12 has been withdrawn. As Tracy
said, it has been absorbed into our annual base budget and will be evaluated annually
as needed.
Crane: So wastewater division enhancement 13 is for the administration and operations
building. This enhancement would provide funding for the design and partial
construction of a new admin building. As you know, due to rapid growth in the recent
years the division has outgrown many of the -- what we call the support facilities. With
the help of our partners at CH2M Hill we -- they performed some spatial analysis and
we have got an idea of what -- the current and future needs. We use flow and load
projections from the facility planning effort to try to project out to full build out. Those --
those efforts, basically, as I mentioned at the tour, have our flows increasing by about
400 percent while the staff roughly doubles. So, we are looking to build afacility -- an
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admin building big enough to last us into full build out at the wastewater plant. Also the
new building could be used -- include some undesignated space to leave for such
purposes as training or education, possibly the continuity of operations in the event of
an emergency situation. And so a new admin building, coupled with the remodel of a
couple of our existing buildings should give us the adequate space that we need now
and well into the future.
Dolsby: Wastewater enhancement number 14 is for fiber optics infrastructure at the
wastewater treatment plant. This enhancement will fund the installation of fibers from
the admin building and also will set it up for the new administration building to the
support facilities around the wastewater treatment plant to provide more reliable and
robust communications. Wastewater division enhancement number 15 is for a site
specific aquifer recharge study. We have recently completed a small investigation into
a couple of different areas in Meridian that might be -- might have the potential for some
aquifer recharge of our wastewater effluent. This will focus in on a few of those areas
and provide more of a complete investigation into the viability of using aquifer recharge
at a few sites in Meridian. This could potentially give us the capability of discharging our
wastewater effluent, thereby alleviating the discharge to the river and it could help
significantly if we, in fact, do get a year around phosphorus limit, because we would be
able to divert some of the wastewater effluent or possibly maybe even all the
wastewater effluent -- it kind of depends on how the study results come out and
alleviate some of the upgrades that we could be otherwise required as a wastewater
plant for phosphorus treatment.
Floyd: Wastewater division enhancement number 16. This enhancement is to hire an
full-time electrician to perform electrical maintenance at both water and wastewater.
This is currently outsourced to a number of other vendors and on average Public Works
is spending roughly 100,000 dollars a year to those vendors. This position will perform
such duties as electrical repair, maintenance of our pumps, valves, generators, blower,
conduits. It will also provide training of staff as some of our electrical work is done in
house. By conducting this type of work in-house it will not only result in a direct cost
savings of about 15,000 dollars a year, but it will also provide of us a greater turnaround
time and improving our response time immensely.
Dolsby: Wastewater Division Enhancement No. 17 is for the installation of reclaimed
water infrastructure to go along with the Ada County Highway District project from
Franklin Road, from Ten Mile to Linder. It's pertinent to note that this area is also within
the service area that we considered for the reclaimed water for the city. With that we
stand for any questions on any of the wastewater enhancements.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
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Hoaglun: Quick question. The ones they withdraw are the cheapest items? I do have
a question on number 15. Clint, I'm just kind of curious on the aquifer recharge. Is that
used in Idaho or how extensive is it used out west? I'm just kind of curious about that.
Dolsby: Currently not -- to the best of my knowledge it hasn't been utilized in Idaho, but
it's -- it's utilized extensively down in the southwest, like California, Arizona, I know in
Nevada,. Even over in Washington over towards Olympia and that area they use it
extensively over there as well.
Hoaglun: Okay. Thank you.
De Weerd: And a lot of people are talking about it
Dolsby: Yes.
De Weerd: -- so it's -- it's a conversation being had by a number of communities in
Idaho at this point.
Hoaglun: And another question on the next one, No. 16, the electrician, we are
spending up to -- I think you said 100,000 a year and does that include the parts or is
that all labor or does that also include materials that they have to provide for whatever
project they are on?
Floyd: Well, it would actually be -- it would combine both of those, is my understanding.
Our business operations put together that -- John, do you know that further? In terms
of the cost of the program -- if that contract also includes material.
McCormick: Yes. Most of it is labor. There is some electronic components that are
included in that. It depends on which vendor is involved and where they source their
parts from and that sort of thing. And the actual cost for those four vendors is well over
150,000 dollars a year, but we subtracted out of that and made allowance for those
costs that were associated with programing the ELC devises that are used in SCADA.
De Weerd: So, would it not include that work, then? That would still be outsourced?
McCormick: Pardon me?
De Weerd: That work would still be outsourced, then, on the SCADA?
McCormick: Yes. That's correct.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
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Bird: Stay up there, John. Regarding the electrician and being very conservative at a
vendor's cost of 80 dollars an hour he's probably charging and if we go to 200,000,
that's roughly about 250 hours in a year and you want to hire somebody that's going to
work 2,000 hours? It don't make sense.
Floyd: Madam Mayor, Councilman Bird, as we have looked over the expenses over the
last few years, 2009, 2010 and '11, that is what we are seeing, you know, the bulk of the
cost and so that we would see that direct cost savings. Granted, it's 15,000 dollars a
year, but we do see that we could have the work to add up to 2,080 hours a year for a
person.
Bird: Follow up. A journeyman electrician is going to cost you close to that 150,000
and, then, what are you going to -- where are you going to work him the rest of the
time? As a journeyman electrician you're not going to want to go out and dig pipe or
anything like that and yet you're only -- at your -- what you're telling is costing for a
vendor, he's charging you I'm sure over 80 dollars an hour, put I'll put 80 dollars in
there. You're only looking at 250 hours that you're calling him out. So, we have only
got 250 hours of labor we need for an electrician and we want to hire afull-time one that
we pay for 2,080 hours?
Barry: Mr. Bird, if I may. Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: Go ahead, Tom.
Barry: So, I'm trying to track your math here, Mr. Bird, and --
Bird: It's wrong.
Barry: Pardon me?
Bird: It could be wrong.
Barry: Well, I want to make sure I'm not wrong either. But if you're using a value of 80
dollars per hour and you multiply that by your 2,080 hours in a typical work year, that's
166,000 dollars. We are reporting 150,000 dollars. So, we are roughly trending with
you on that number. We removed the controls, which is something that this person
could possibly do, but we thought in fairness that we would remove that dollar amount
simply because we weren't certain about the skill and capability level of that particular --
of apotential new hire. But we are trending at still roughly the same number of hours at
80 dollars an hour on your number and, of course, we think we can get somebody in
much cheaper than 80 dollars an hour. Of course, we are reflecting 79,000 with
benefits. So, we do believe that the work is there and that it does justify a close look at
bringing this particular resource in-house. The alternative, of course, is to continue to
outsource it. But we feel that with the trend we have witnessed over the last several
years it does make sense and would save the city not substantial money, but, you
know, pretty good -- pretty good amount of money, 15 to 20 thousand dollars annually.
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Bird: And, Tom, I don't disagree with you if you can keep them busy, but I'm -- you
know, an electrician isn't going to go dig ditch. If we can keep them busy I have no
problem with that, having an in-house electrician, but we got to justify that -- you know.
And when you figure your cost you know dang good and well he's going to have a
vehicle, he's going to have equipment, he's going to need equipment outside of his
hand tools and -- which he would furnish. So, just his labor and -- isn't a cost to the city,
where when you have a vendor all that cost is figured in the hourly rate.
Barry: That is true, Mr. Bird.
McCormick: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, John
McCormick: Councilman Bird, just to address the point that this person might have
available time on their hands, we do have aggressive actions around performance
matrix that this person would be involved in related to the meantime to repair of
equipment and the meantime between failure. Both of those matrix are important to our
operations people. Right now if the equipment goes down they wait for a person to
show up and that equipment doesn't come back up until the person is on site and the
repair work is completed. So, there is an additional value here that goes way beyond
the cost of the person that we are talking about and it, obviously, would increase our
efficiencies in the plant operations, which, in addition, lowers our cost. So, I just wanted
to point that out. Thank you.
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree, did you have a comment?
Rountree: Madam Mayor, yes. Just -- nothing about the budget per se, it's the timing
and maybe a risk question. You have a couple projects in your requested budget for
Franklin Road 2013 project. That project's a contingency project on ACHD's program,
which means it's probably going to slip. So, it's more of a procedural question. Do we
anticipate that in the budget or do we do a budget amendment if, in fact, that project
comes this year. My guess it probably won't, but it could. It's slipped -- it's been
slipping and it could slip some more. I'm not sure they are even are through the right of
way, but I know they have started the right of way acquisition. Just a procedural
question. Not for you guys to answer, for us to answer. How is it best to handle that
situation? I appreciate the anticipation, but would it be better to maybe not be so
aggressive in that particular one. The next question --
De Weerd: Before you move on, I was at a business this week and the business owner
mentioned that ACHD is talking to businesses and many of the businesses felt that they
were doing it this year and they are doing it -- they are going to be starting it from what
they have been told, but it is for budget year 2013. So, I think they are moving forward,
but --
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Rountree: But it's still a --
De Weerd: -- we do need that. Yeah.
Rountree: So, that's just something to throw out there, nothing for you guys to answer.
The other question is several of the proposed enhancements are based on this elusive
permit that we have been talking about for a number of years and apparently it's our
turn maybe to go through that process. If we were to get a new permit in fiscal year '13,
is there an allowance or a period of time that the city is allowed to gear up for whatever
requirements that might be in that permit, so, for instance, the lab, anticipating more
tests on a permit we have yet to receive. Would it be better to receive the permit and
know that we are going to get three times the tests or maybe we are not. I don't know.
To me, again, that's a timing thing. And I appreciate, again, the anticipation, Tom, and
based on what we have seen, but just -- just looking at the numbers.
Barry: Madam Mayor, Mr. Rountree, that is an excellent point and it's one we have
struggled with now for several years. Our indication in reality is what we have seen in a
finalized permit for the city of Boise. Obviously, a different system, a much that larger
and -- not necessarily more complex, but certainly a larger system and what we are
hearing from the EPA, both in my direct conversations with staff locally and at
headquarters -- well, not headquarters, rather regional headquarters and in addition to
conversations that have been shared with us from city of Nampa staff as well and we
think that it's reasonable what we are expecting as of what we are witnessing through
these conversations and in prior permit. There is -- to answer your question --generally
an allowance or recognition I should say by the EPA in helping to gear up towards
permit requirements, there is usually a compliance schedule that's usually required to
be met. That certainly exists in the city of Boise's permit as it relates to phosphorus
reduction. They have a stepwise reduction that has to occur over a ten year period. As
it relates to laboratory analyses that would be something we would have to negotiate
directly with EPA. There is a possibility that the EPA could say we will allow you a year,
18 months, two years to get your laboratory up to -- up to date. I think, rather, that there
will not be an allowance likely for that, they would just simply say we want these
analyticals done and you figure out how to do it. There are outsourcing opportunities for
you to do that and there could be significant costs associated with, you know,
outsourcing these in the interim while we are building the lab. So, we think that what we
have proposed is the most reasonable based upon the information we have, but it's a
very good question and I'm not certain I can answer it maybe to your satisfaction.
That's probably the best I can do at this point.
Rountree: Well, you know, I appreciate the foresight and the best information you have
is what we have seen happen in Boise and I suspect you're probably pretty close to
being on it. I just asked the question to make sure that on the record if it's been
analyzed, it's been looked at, there is a reasonable rationale for moving forward. I do
have a little concern about -- if we do get something less than we anticipate and being
forward looking on some of this stuff, we might overbuild, but it will be useful at some
point in time and the space may be there, you may not have to equip it.
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Barry: Exactly, Mr. Rountree. I think -- I think that's probably where we go if we had
maybe a little extra space and --
Rountree: It wouldn't hurt.
Barry: Right. And we just wouldn't equip it.
Rountree: Yeah. Okay.
Crane: Madam Mayor, Councilman Rountree, if I may. Part of our spatial analysis that
we did to try to make the best decision was to look at treatment plants that are our size
and our projected size across the country. We specifically chose CH2M Hill because
they -- their arm runs a lot of treatment plants and we have -- we asked them to look at
laboratories across their section and tell us is this too big, is this too small, is this the
right size and I even posed the question to the project manager, I said if this was a
design build operate and this was your company's money, is this what you would -- you
would recommend, right? Because that's what we are looking for. I want to be able to
tell my rate payers the same thing, that we have done our diligence and this is -- so,
there was a great deal of discussion that took place with the consultant as we were
looking at the sizing, because we, too, had the same concerns and I think that I finally
got to a point where I was comfortable and they could look at me and say, yeah, if this
was our company's money we feel like that it's in -- to quote him, he said it's not too big ,
but it's not too small. We feel like it's what you're going to need, so those square
footages and costs are based on that as well.
Rountree: Very good.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: This is kind of a sideways and, actually, I believe for the Finance
Department, prompted by number five, the sewer main replacements. My question isn't
that something that for finance purposes would relate to the depreciation reserve? Isn't
the idea behind the depreciation reserve to be able to replace facilities as they get worn
out or used? I know we normally think of buildings, but couldn't we use it for this?
Kilchenmann: I'm not -- it is a depreciation type item. I'm not sure what your question is
exactly.
Zaremba: Well, I'm just wondering whether it ought to be -- if we are setting up the
depreciation reserve, the purpose of that would be to pay for facilities that need to be
replaced and I know we talked about --
Kilchenmann: Correct. We just don't --
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Zaremba: -- being ready for like 20 years from now, but wouldn't that apply to
something like --
Kilchenmann: It would. However, we don't have a depreciation fund set up at this time.
Zaremba: I thought we did.
Kilchenmann: No, we don't.
Zaremba: Oh.
Kilchenmann: We transferred -- we have -- this year's transfer in actual cash is like
250,000 dollars. I think last year we did 250,000. We have three or four -- five hundred
thousand in there. So, at this point we --
Zaremba: The purpose is to start -- is to keep accumulating that --
Kilchenmann: Correct.
Zaremba: -- but at the current time, in the next several years we are going to do pay as
you go --
Kilchenmann: Well, correct, we --
Zaremba: -- and let depreciation from --
Kilchenmann: Because Tom -- he touched on it at the beginning when he first gave his
introduction, so we haven't actually set up -- except for these small amounts, a cash
fund for depreciation, because most of the assets are relatively new and -- because it's
complex when we actually set one up, because that means that they have to go through
and really determine what assets will be -- they will use at replacement, so it's kind of
restricting, so it's a long process for them to determine how much should be in that fund
and when shall we start using it, what kind of assets for replacement. These assets are
relatively smaller and not probably the big infrastructure replacements that they will
eventually build a fund for. We can elaborate if you would like.
Zaremba: Okay.
Barry: Madam Mayor, if I might just add to that. Councilman Zaremba, that's all correct.
The depreciation fund that we have -- remember we talked about a reserve that we set
aside -- is actually just earmarked within the ending fund balance right now and what we
would like to do is formalize that, as Stacy was alluding to going forward and Public
Works has developed and is continuing to refine the list of eligible depreciating assets
that we would, then, allocate that funding for, but that hasn't been formally set up. Right
now it's a set aside strictly in the ending fund balance and so that's how we use these
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terms undesignated ending fund balance and designated ending fund balance. The
designated component is funds that are earmarked for certain types of reserves, like the
depreciation reserve, the operation reserve, the regulatory reserve, and so forth. So,
the money does exist, we are just utilizing it and, therefore, you're not seeing it come
out through that line item, because that doesn't exist just yet and that's something we
are trying to work on as we go forward.
Zaremba: That helps. Thank you both.
De Weerd: Okay. Council, anything else at this point?
Bird: I have none, Mayor.
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you. I will call a break right now. Council, there is lunch in
the other room. You can grab some lunch and we can reconvene to -- in 15 minutes.
(Recess: 11:55 a.m. to 12:10 p.m.)
Water Department
De Weerd: Okay. We will go ahead and call this meeting back to order and now we will
be hearing from the water department.
Teller: All right. Good afternoon, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. Thank you
for your time today with us. I'd like to start today's water presentation with two capital
replacement projects. First being a vehicle replacement request for our current fire
hydrant maintenance program. The city currently maintains and services a growing list
of over 4,300 fire hydrants, better protection for public safety and insure that all fire
hydrants are accessible and operational for emergency personnel we have developed
the following scheduled routine maintenance program. Our current vehicle for this
program that you see in the picture to the left is incapable of carrying the required
equipment and tools necessary for servicing and maintaining our growing number of fire
hydrants. The proposed replacement should be on the right, to be appropriately sized,
and equipped with the necessary equipment and tools needed to safely and efficiently
perform all aspects for a growing program. Our second capital replacement that we are
asking for is a request for four chairs for our administrative office. This request is in
alignment with our equipment replacement plan. Now, with that I would ask for any
questions on those replacements.
De Weerd: Council, any questions?.
Rountree: I have none.
Radek: Madam Mayor, Council Members, we have 16 enhancements for the water
division, two of which have been withdrawn, similar to wastewater to go into the base
budget. The first enhancement source water master planning. This enhancement is
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July 11 , 2012
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intended simply, I believe, to accomplish two things to, number one, understand our
source water resources and, number two, protect our interest to insure that we have a
clean, safe water supply at a reasonable cost forever. It includes long-term
measurement efforts, pump testing, scientific reports and developmental plans, policies,
and regulations. This is the third year that we have requested this enhancement. We
have accomplished significant work thus far and we have quite a bit of work currently
underway. Enhancement number two is the ground reservoir number two. This
enhancement is to complete design and begin construction of a two million gallon
reservoir in south Meridian. The storage reservoir is needed to be able to supply peak
and emergency water supply to the area as it continues to grow and increase demand.
We have made significant efforts to engage local residents regarding this project to
understand and address their issues and concerns and we have recently completed a
new property search and are ready to continue this effort and move forward with the
entitlement process for this project.
Teller: Enhancement number three is a request for funding to help assist the water
division in developing and incorporating Hansen asset management software into our
daily operations. With the incorporation of this software we will gain operational
efficiencies through improved scheduling and tracking of priority assets and
maintenance programs, such as our critical inventory needs, fire hydrant and valve
maintenance programs, well operations and maintenance programs, our water sampling
and regulatory compliance and even our newly implemented backflow prevention
program. Professional assistance is required to help expedite this software integration
due to the large and diverse operation of the water division and the complexity of
tailoring the software to suit our specific needs. This is the first phase of a two-phase
project and will be completed over the next two years. Enhancement number four is a
request for funding to improve the security of our city's water, well, and reservoir
facilities. This is a continuation of our ongoing efforts to better secure our water
production sites from potential threats and harm. Last year's improvements including
upgrading the site security of the installation of a more robust padlock system and doors
with nonduplicatable keys at all of our water facilities. Plans for next year's funding
includes the installation of security fencing at Well No. 24, a motion triggered alarm
system for our storage facilities and the installation of more robust and secure doors at
Well No. 22.
Radek: Enhancement No. 5 has been withdrawn to be included in the operations base
budget, since most of the work is of a maintenance nature. This means that I will have
to find other opportunities besides the budget presentation to report our successful
projects in this area. But since I'm here now I will take the opportunity to let know what
we accomplished this last year. We performed the assessment of Well 12, 23 and 24
and Well 24 was our first assessment of a PVC cased well that's been in service for ten
years now and it showed us that -- that use of PVC as an alternative to steel for casing
material was a very good decision and this well should be in service for many many
decades to come and this coming year we plan to evaluate Well 15 and Well 11. Next
enhancement is Well 16B. This enhancement is more evidence that PVC casing was a
good decision. This well has been in service for only 16 years and it has a severely
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corroded casing. This well might be rehabilitated with PVC sleeve inside this well
casing, however, the well also has problematic water chemistry that includes iron and
uranium. So, this enhancement is for the design and construction of a new production
well on the same lot. That way we can utilize the building power and the generator that
are currently on site and we are currently doing a test well at that location to figure out
where we are going to put that production well.
Teller: Okay. Enhancement number seven is a request for funding for the purchase of
information of additional chlorine analyzers at our well sites and pressure reducing
stations. We have made great strides in the past few years and are now completing
remaining installation analyzers at our pumping facilities. Next year with the site map
completed we will be turning our efforts towards the distribution system in our PRD
stations. By installing analyzers at these locations we will be gaining a better
understanding of our disinfection levels throughout the distribution system and use this
information to better enhance and further protect the water quality while helping to
reduce residual concerns of disinfection such as brown water.
Radek: Enhancement No. 8 is SCADA system upgrades. Just as with wastewater with
the completion of the SCADA master plan we are now ready to begin equipping our
wells and PRV sites with new radio and antennas and PLCs -- I'm sorry -- radios,
antennas and PLCs and associated equipment and this will help to optimize our system
for power consumptions, water quality, and other parameters with the more reliable
communications we have. The next enhancement, No. 9, is water main replacement
and this enhancement we have done a successful job I believe of messing up
downtown streets for the last couple of years on our own and replacing a lot of water
main, but this year we are dedicating virtually all the money for this enhancement to the
split corridor work, so ACHD will mess up the road for us and we will get to get our --
our water main replacement in their project. Enhancement No. 10 is Well 17 pumping
facility upgrade. This enhancement will upgrade the pump and control at Well 17 to
allow it to function like other pumps in our system, which provides flexibility and more
consistent service to our customers. Essentially, that's a constant speed pump with a
cycle stop valve controlling flow into the system and we are going to put a variable
frequency drive on it and a new pump, which will allow us to control it and be -- be more
flexible and provide better service. Enhancement number 11 was withdrawn to go to
the base budget and it is for different facility improvements, valves, VFD harmonic
filters, surge tanks, things like that, just to improve our system reliability and robustness
and that's in the operations budget now. Enhancement No. 12 is Well 15 treatment.
This enhancement is for the design of a water treatment system at Well 15 and is -- will
actually be our second effort to begin correcting brown water at the source of the
problem. Well 15 will be evaluated, as I mentioned earlier, to assess -- and we will
include in the normal evaluation an assessment of whether water chemistry correction
can be made at the well itself before we design a treatment facility, but ultimately we
believe a treatment facility will be necessary to improve the source water quality at Well
15. Enhancement No. 13, Well 21 treatment. This would be our first effort at correcting
brown water at its source. We have completed preliminary pilot testing for treatment at
Well 21 and this enhancement is intended to complete the evaluation and design of a
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treatment facility to address iron and manganese and to begin construction at the
facility.
Teller: Enhancement No. 14 is a request for funding to equip the 8th Street water
administrative office with a backup power supply. Only 13 of the city's 19 water
production wells are equipped with an on-site power generation unit. These generators,
powered by both diesel and natural gas, are capable of running emergency power to
critical wells in the event of an electrical failure. Under normal circumstances the city's
network of wells is controlled by a central SCADA system located at our water
administrative office. In the event of a power failure operators are currently unable to
control or receive essential information or alarms from the SCADA system or utilize
radio communications. To increase our system robustness and insure continuity of
service during periods of emergency we are requesting the purchase of a generator for
this location. Backup power supply will be fully capable of powering the facility
indefinitely, of course pending fuel, while addressing the operational needs of our
SCADA and radio communication equipment. This enhancement will also fill the
requirements of the city's continuity of operations plan and will align us with other city
facilities equipped with such backup generators like the fire department and police
department.
Radek: Enhancement No. 15 is land acquisition for reservoir, booster, and well site.
This enhancement is for the identification and purchase of a property in northwest
Meridian to be used for a future reservoir, booster, and well site. Our goal as -- and this
was -- this need for this in the future was identified in our current master plan update
and our goal for this enhancement is to obtain a property which can then be designated
and publicly signed for this purpose well in advance of the actual project and in advance
of development around the site.
De Weerd: That would be cool.
Zaremba: Way to go.
Radek: We do tend to learn from -- learn from the past. That's half the battle.
Enhancement No. 16, water line extensions, is to fund the design, construction, and
water line extension project in order to expand and improve the distribution system. The
particular project that this is scheduled for is the Franklin Road, Ten Mile to Linder
project and our water line replacements and -- or, I'm sorry, our waterline improvements
and adjustments within that project.
Teller: Madam Mayor and Council, we would stand for any questions or comments you
may have.
De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Rountree: I have none.
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De Weerd: None?
Teller: Thank you for your time.
Radek: Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Barry: And with that, Madam Mayor and Members of the Council, we draw to a close
our budget request and information sharing with you and turn the time over to you for
any additional questions or comments you might have regarding what you have heard
today and certainly look forward to that conversation regarding your deliberations. So,
thank you for your time.
De Weerd: Thank you, Tom, to you and your staff. I know a lot of work goes into the
budget presentation, the budget preparation, and I appreciate everything that you have
done. Council, discussion? Any additional information needed on any of the items
before we go through it replacement and enhancement? Okay. Seeing none. You
have the list of capital improvements in front of you -- or capital replacements. Any
additional questions on any of these items? If there aren't any we can go into the
capital enhancements.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I do have -- on that Ford Ranger, 69,000?
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
Bird: That -- is that the -- it's -- is that -- that isn't the -- this truck, the one that's going to
take the -- which truck is that for 69,000?
Teller: Madam Mayor, Councilman Bird, that's a replacement vehicle from that small
Ford Ranger to a larger ton, ton and half --
Bird: That's the one to the -- with the lift and everything.
Teller: It will have a crane on --
Bird: Everything on it. Okay.
Teller: It will have all the -- yes.
De Weerd: We thought it was a Hummer.
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Bird: You're not replacing --
Teller: Yeah. I was kind of shocked, too, when we quoted it out. Yeah.
The equipment on the truck that --
Bird: Well, I think that's cheap with all the equipment and everything. Great.
Teller: Yeah. I was shocked when I saw that. I was not expecting it that high, but --
yeah, that's actually what it cost, so --
Bird: I thought that was awful expensive for a Ranger.
Teller: They like the stereo system.
De Weerd: Can you maybe do something with that line item to make it a little bit more
descriptive to reflect that there -- it's equipped with hydraulic or something. Because if I
saw --
Bird: Maintenance Truck.
Zaremba: Put the word upgrade in there. Madam Mayor, the comment I was going to
make is that we saw yesterday that the Parks Department is replacing Rangers for
21,000 dollars, something like that, so --
De Weerd: I think we need to --
Zaremba: I think we need to identify somehow that we are not replacing a Ranger with
a Ranger, we are upgrading.
Bird: I would pull the Ranger out if it was me and put in a one ton maintenance truck
and --
De Weerd: Utility or --
Bird: -- utility truck --
De Weerd: -- something.
Bird: -- with equipment.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
Bird: And look at that and they are going to be just like me.
De Weerd: If I can just give Mr. Rountree a --
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Kilchenmann: We probably should have put that as an enhancement, because it is a
change, rather than a replacement, so Todd can fool -- fool around -- Todd can -- but,
yeah, in the future I would recommend --
De Weerd: I don't know. I thought he had double --
Kilchenmann: Since we are tripling the cost it should have been an enhancement. But
we will see where it is and --
De Weerd: Okay. Any questions in this section? Okay. So, we move to
enhancements. Okay. You have your Public Works section or division. Any questions
in this one? Which, by the way, includes environmental. So, Mollie, I was not trying to
avoid you.
Hoaglun: I'm -- Madam Mayor. The safety administrator, if I read this correctly, we
have an ongoing -- where we have been doing 25,000 dollars -- somewhere I thought I
read 31,000. And I guess I'm making an assumption here that somehow this person
comes into the training, but there is already a safety individual designated for each
department to oversee that. Maybe that's a question for John. Should have asked this
earlier, I apologize, John, but on that safety administrator, do you have people within
each division who are in charge of safety to some degree or another or it's just safety is
everybody's responsibility. I know that's the mantra, but how does that process work?
McCormick: Madam Mayor and Councilman Hoaglun, we do have a representative in
each division that have association with the safety activities, particularly as it relates to
identifying hazards and dealing with things of that nature. We don't have a centralized
focus around that beyond the health and safety manual, the safety committee that
oversees that process. Typically that would report into the deputy director, which has
since retired and we are look at replacing him. But this is not a dedicated effort, so it's a
matter of, you know, people doing their other jobs and trying integrate a safety
component into that work.
Hoaglun: Okay.
Bird: Madam Mayor, while John is up there. John, what are we paying now, 25,000
under contract? Is that what that --
McCormick: This year I believe it will be about 37,000 is how we will end up the year.
Bird: And, basically, this contracted safety guy does inspections. Does he inspect the
facilities?
McCormick: Most of the work that he does is associated with training and providing
some oversight in a couple of areas as it relates to the operations. He does nothing for
the engineering, the other divisions outside of water and wastewater.
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Bird: But he does the scope that you have requested for that contract; right?
McCormick: He does.
Bird: And if you change the scope he could also do that; right?
McCormick: We could.
Bird: And how often -- how often does the water department or the wastewater
treatment department have a safety meeting where all employees come in for ten or 15
minutes and go over stuff? How often do we do that? And who does that?
McCormick: Each of the divisions have -- just a moment. We will let them speak to
that.
Teller: Madam Mayor, Councilman Bird, currently at the water division we hold safety
meetings on a regular basis every two weeks. We are actually looking into that right
now to hold it every week. Just small --
Bird: With all your -- with all of employees --
Teller: Oh, yeah.
Bird: -- that's working that day?
Teller: With all the staff working --
Bird: Is it just a little table top meeting that -- do they sign in or our minutes kept?
Teller: Minutes are kept and they do sign in.
Bird: Okay.
Teller: And some of them are small, like you said, ten, 15 minutes, and some are a little
bit longer, that can be up to an hour with a video and stuff and like that.
Bird: And who conducts those?
Teller: We conduct those inside with our representative on the safety committee. He's
the one that's leading that up.
Bird: Okay.
Ballantyne: And currently -- Madam Mayor and Members of the Council. Currently
wastewater our retired assistant superintendent was headed -- did head up all of the
safety, so we have -- we have moved some of those duties to other folks while we
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recruit for that position. However, we have several things that we do do outside of the
safety committee and our representation on the safety committee. One of the things we
do is we require or we have our employees -- every month we have one of the health
and safety procedures that's in the whole manual and we have them review it and sign
off that they reviewed it and we continually go through the whole manual and we get to
the beginning and we start over again. About on a quarterly basis we would do what we
call sort of refresher PowerPoint training for -- at the general staff meeting where we will
go over confined space entry, rough grade protection, those kind of things. We have a
program of PowerPoints that we have developed that we do. And, then, on a routine
basis we do a lot of confined space entry and those kind of things and we use a permit
system to where all of the folks that are going to be involved in that project will have a
prior meeting and they will go over the permit. The permits are written and signed. At
staff meetings folks do sign in and folks do sign or initial that they have read the H&S
safety proceedings. The rest of the training and the other things are all broad with
either our contractor or other outside sources. So, that sort of large safety program and,
then, right now thankfully Laurelei has agreed to head up what Gail was doing until we
can find a replacement for --
Bird: Madam Mayor, follow up?
De Weerd: Yes.
Bird: If an operator finds an unsafe deal at either one of you guys -- who does -- who
does he report that to right now?
Ballantyne: I would say he could report it to his supervisor, but any of us. I don't think --
you know, he -- anywhere in --
Bird: Have a designated at each plant.
Ballantyne: We do not have -- they would bring it forward in one of the staff meetings
and we would make note of it. So, they could -- you know, we want to make sure they
feel free that they could report it to anybody and we would take action on it, but there is
not a designated this is the following procedure that you do in that event at our place
currently.
Bird: And that's something that I feel we should have in place at each plant and I think
we can deal with. Two guys are very capable of doing it. I would -- to be truthful with
you, I would sooner stay with the contract -- if our scope needs to get a little bigger, do
it, see what it is, see what it's going to cost, but -- over hiring another employee, that's
my personal opinion. I think that we are capable and it's probably better if we do
internally within our plant. Every employee should be looking out and every employee
should have weekly or bi-weekly or whatever you want to -- however often you want to
have it. You should have meetings and go over this stuff, just remind them of -- to
watch this and this and this. And it don't take 15, 20 minutes, to have a cup of coffee
and do it. So, I think that we stay with a good contacted deal. I know that as a
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contracted thing it is very -- very successful on the very large construction jobs. You
never see inside safety people anymore. They are all constructed out. Because it's
nice to have an outside eyes. If I'm working for an employer I'm going to be more
favorable to him if I see something than if I'm on the job as a -- working for somebody
else doing that as a job. I would like to see us at least go another year under contract
with a different scope -- John, whatever scope you think you need, you know, within
reason. And those two guys right there are capable to make sure their plants are
handled.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: It was my understanding that many of the safety things that you just talked
about -- that the current contractor is not involved in those. They show up for a meeting
now and then, but I -- it was my understanding that to get the scope of what we are
talking about we would probably end up paying that contractor four times what we are
paying them now or five times. It's a very part time -- that was my understanding.
Extremely part time and not really available when we need them sometimes and that
was my understanding for why it would make more sense to have somebody that was
right in our hand and on site. But tell me a little bit more about what we depend on the
current contract to do.
Ballantyne: Councilman Zaremba, everything I mentioned was outside of the
contractor. The PowerPoints were developed in-house. The H&S safety procedure,
the views we do in-house. We do our own confined space entry permits. That does
require annual recertification training and that's -- the contractor does provide that. But
everything that I mentioned that we do on the safety side is outside of our safety
committee and the interaction with the contractor. He's providing some overlay BAT, a
few training sessions for us and he does go through the plant and sort of gives us a list
of what potential violations are each year, which we address, and from -- I guess from
my perspective that's about all that he's providing our division at this point.
Teller: I would agree with that.
McCormick: And if I could respond to that, Councilman Zaremba, and maybe address
Councilman Bird's point as well. We have just gotten to the point of having a
well-defined program with policies and procedures in place, with the training identified
for dealing with hazards, basic safety training in addition to that. So, that scope of work
is going to grow tremendously, because we not implementing that program as it's
defined. And so also as regulations come into the mix, you know, we have challenges
on that front, too. So, what you have got is a fairly casual approach to managing safety
and health. It's a good one. It's a good start. But the resources available on a -- kind of
casual part-time basis to come in and do spot things, you know, and we do the other
things operationally to keep things going and keep the engagement level up with
employee base, but beyond that it's not happening on the training side to the extent that
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it needs to. So, that would be an additional scope of work, Councilman Bird, that would
have to be incorporated, as well as the extension of that beyond the wastewater
treatment plant and the water division.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Uh-huh.
Bird: Could I ask another question? I just -- our inspectors that go out on the job, who
is doing safety for them? Because every job they go on is -- is -- most contractors are
married to OSHA now, you know, they -- who is giving them the safety and who is --
when are they having their meetings and going through all of this stuff that legally you
have got to do.
McCormick: Councilman Bird, I can't speak for the inspectors that we have on contract
Bird: Those guys, they are doing it.
McCormick: But --
Bird: I'm talking about the ones you got under Public Works that goes out on the sewer
lines and water -- the guys that are -- I see -- I think it's them that are going out here all
the time carrying stuff, going over and getting Public Works cars.
McCormick: Oh, there you are.
Jensen: Madam Mayor, Council Members. The -- the contract safety consultant that
we do have that goes out on these projects -- capital projects development projects, he
goes out there and verifies -- verifies that the project is safe for the inspectors to be out
there doing a project. Their inspections also. Goes up there and verifies that the -- that
the inspector's inspecting safely. But those are all spot inspections, they are
unannounced, so that kind of helps out as a third-party consultant going out and doing it
unannounced. So, he -- he verifies that everybody is safe on site and that the site is
safe for the inspectors.
Bird: Madam Mayor, follow up?
De Weerd: Uh-huh.
Bird: Is that -- is that our inspector or is that the inspector that the contractor hires on
the job -- the particular job or is that the one we contract to doing that?
Jensen: Our contract safety consultant does that for -- for the city employee inspector
Bird: Okay. Thank you.
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Jensen: Thank you.
Bird: That answered it very good. Thank you. Thank you, guys.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: I'm kind of like Councilman Bird, I don't know if we are there yet for afull-time
safety administrator. I'm -- I mean safety is that issue that they are to be focused on
every day in their jobs, because what they do is something -- they have to pay attention
to. And if we need to increase that contracted bid, it sounds like there is some
dissatisfaction with the current contractor, I'm okay with that, coming back and saying
it's going to be instead of 31, 37 thousand, it's going to have to be 45 thousand and
there probably will be a point where we go, okay, it's reached that level of funding that it
makes sense to have someone full time. I don't know. I listened very carefully to what
was being said and I don't know if I was convinced enough that that time is here yet to
hire someone full time.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I -- don't get me wrong, I'm open and I want us to be the safest working place that
there is and I think we are thanks to our employees and our managers. I would like to
get a more defined scope, John, to a safety -- and I think there is two or three firms out
there that are pretty reputable on this safety thing and I would at least like to try it
another year, this -- under the existing -- and I'm like Councilman Hoaglun, I'm sure at
some point -- and it's probably going to be sooner than we want it to be -- we are going
to have to have a safety guy. But Idon't -- I just don't see a reasoning for afull-time
employee right now, because there is more -- there is more to -- than just wages and
benefits to a full-time employee in my opinion.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes. I'm sorry. Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I don't want this to totally sound like an opposing opinion, but when I first
talked about this with staff or they talked about it with me, I mean the thing that I factor
into it is -- I'm always wondering with every contractor we have, when is the time that
this should become an in-house position or should it never. As we see from the other
enhancements and the other things that are going on in 2013, I can totally agree that if
we -- if we talk about today maybe it isn't time today. But all of the things that we have
going on -- I'm assuming we are going to approve all of or most of them -- in 2013 in all
of the Public Works areas, having a dedicated person whose responsibility it is to make
sure everybody understands -- I am in support of having this be an in-house person that
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reports to our staff and is responsible for our staff. I just -- maybe that's just a gut
feeling, but I think we have enough things proposed for 2013 that it's a bigger position
than I think we should contract for.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Or do you want Mr. Barry's comment first?
Bird: Go ahead, Tom, and, then, I will follow.
Barry: Madam Mayor and Members of the Council, respectfully, I appreciate the
dialogue that's going on and based on what I'm picking up I would be comfortable
saying a couple things here and I will give you a recommendation for your
consideration. First of all, we do know that in the department, based upon a recent
update of our health and safety manual, which numbers something on the order of 33
chapters, that we are deficient in meeting the policies and procedures outlined in that
manual. While we do have some -- some policies and programs in place and some
training that is occurring, we do feel that that needs to be improved. However, I don't
think that the department has done an adequate job in justifying to you what that -- what
those improvements would need to look like and, therefore, in justifying how we would
move forward with closing gaps as we -- as we feel they exist in the department. So,
my recommendation would be to, essentially, respectively withdraw this particular
enhancement and ask that you allow us to go back under this -- either enhanced
contract or a contract with another vendor to do an audit of our safety program in the
department and come back to you with recommendations of what that audit has found
and present to you recommendations that come out of that audit as well. I think that
way we could all have peace of mind knowing how big of a gap, if any -- and we believe
there is one. But how big of a gap there is with regard to safety, improvements, training,
policies, procedures, those sorts of things and make a more reasonable and
responsible presentation to you related to that particular activity within the department.
So, that would be my offering to you with the suggestion that we do up the allotted
contract amount to -- I think Mr. Hoaglun said something like 45,000. I think that would
be reasonable to include maybe an audit as a component. That would be maybe my
revised recommendation to you for your consideration.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Thank you, Tom. Yes, Mr. Bird.
Bird: One thing, David, I think your -- we do have a lot of projects, but every -- every
project -- every general contractor that we have on deal should be given a safety book
of all his subcontractors and everything, because everybody has to turn in a safety
book. Your safety program and all this stuff. Tom, I think that's a great idea. Forty-five,
fifty thousand, fine. Let's see what we can do. You're getting these safety manuals and
stuff for every project that you're subcontracting out, am I not right?
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Barry: Mr. Bird --
Bird: They are on file with the job shack. Or should be.
Barry: They should not at the job shack, but that's not --
Bird: You might want to look at some of them and get you some ideas. You got a great
idea. We do need -- with the chemicals and stuff, your plan out there at wastewater
treatment probably has -- should have the most safety conscious set of documents that
there is and I know we are lacking in that.
Barry: Uh-huh.
Bird: It's just -- thank God we have had good people there. But you're dealing with
something out there that it's very dangerous and -- or could be very dangerous. So,
having an outside source I think is -- to help us with that, set up a policy, a very strict
policy, and, then, it's up to us to make sure that it's lived by. I think you got a great idea.
I'm for it a hundred percent.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: I think Tom's suggestion is a fine suggestion. I'm confused, however, what
this job is intended to do from what I heard and what I read. My emphasis and primary
emphasis in this area is the health and safety of our employees. I hope that's the
primary purpose. I do get a drift that there is some kind of an enforcement capacity that
might be included in this on job sites and I'm not sure that's where we want to go with
this particular position. It sounds like our contracted safety person goes out on job sites
and looks at the safety conditions, as opposed to training our inspectors on what they
should be looking for. So, I -- to clarify that point in your job analysis, if this, in fact, is to
do that and maybe some more activities, I would like to know that before I move forward
with it. But I'm comfortable we need to do this, whether we hire it or whether we expand
our scope of deliverable from a consultant.
Barry: Thank you for your question, Councilman Rountree. The position was initially
conceived to close gaps that, obviously, we have done not necessarily the best of job
identifying for you. But with regard to safety, the training component -- we know that we
are not providing enough training. We know that there is more procedures and policies
in our revised health and safety manual than we can even get to in a year. I will tell you
that having been, essentially, overseeing the update to the health and safety manual,
that it has taken us roughly 18 months to do just the update internally alone. And that
was not necessarily even the most robust of jobs for that matter. The conceived
components of this position are to provide, first of all, policy administration and
compliance with policies through a variety of different mechanisms. One would be
training, which is a huge component to what we do in the department and, then, also
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 11 , 2012
Page 46 of 57
auditing, that is some of the spot checking that was referred to earlier that currently our
consultant is doing. And, then, also compliance and oversight of impending regulations
that are coming. We don't even really track OSHA improvements or Labor and Industry
improvements that are coming our way. I mean there is really -- there is no one looking
at that. We don't feel -- and, again, vendor issues are one thing that we can set aside,
but we are just not feeling comfortable that we can provide the kind of safety, training,
auditing and compliance programs that we really need for the department. So, this
position was intended to sort of address all of that. Now, what's apparent here is that
unlike how we have approached this in the past, we have developed a program and
outlined the components of the program and the staff resources required to meet the
program. I will use a recent example, the inventory management program. That's how
we -- how we went about that. In this case we approached it a little bit differently,
believing that this particular person would help develop the program as in-staff or in-
house person. What I'm hearing is that the Council might feel more comfortable if we --
we went back to just kind of the way we did it before, which was develop the program,
identify the gaps, the shortcomings and the overall recommendations and the level of
effort that would be needed to close those gaps, both in a short term and a long term
basis, which is why I make the recommendation I did. So -- so some of the questions
that you're asking, Councilman Rountree, which are very important and very good
questions, were intended to be addressed once the person got on staff, but I'm hearing
that that's not necessarily a comfort area for the Council and I'm okay with that, too.
De Weerd: Okay.
Bird: Madam Mayor, then, can we -- I guess -- would that remain an enhancement to
change that -- to change that from -- that wouldn't be an enhancement -- it would wipe
that completely out and that would just be on his existing operations and just take --
take it up from whatever you're at now to --
Rountree: Professional services.
De Weerd: Yeah. Todd will --
Lavoie: Madam Mayor, Councilman Bird, what I will do is I will keep the line item here
and just represent the difference between -- I believe the value is going to be 45,000, is
that what I'm hearing? The contracted price?
Hoaglun: Yeah. I'd mention that. I mean we could do 50,000.
Lavoie: Okay.
Hoaglun: Give them some room to be able to go out there and find the contractors they
want.
Lavoie: So, what I will do I will go ahead and figure out the difference between our
current contract and I will work with our purchase department to verify the contract and,
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 11 , 2012
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then, I will split the difference on this line item so we know what it represents and I will
remove the wages and whatnot so you will have an increase in ongoing operating,
everything else will fall off.
De Weerd: That's good. Okay
Zaremba: And Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Since I expressed an alternate opinion, I would chime in that I agree with the
new suggestion and it sounds good to me.
De Weerd: Good. Okay. Any other items in the Public Works section that needs to be
discussed?
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, I just want to comment and -- on the irrigation system study. I
think Councilman Rountree brought up some excellent points about how that's going to
be phased and what I heard from Tom and others was the fact that that's the approach
that you're going to take, because if we hit some things that are go, no go, and let's
spend the rest of the money if we hit something that going to say, hey, is this not
workable. So, I'm putting it in your capable hands to go about it in that process that he
talked about there, so --
Jensen: Madam Mayor and Councilman, I think that's the exact -- excuse me -- exact
approach that we will be looking at when we draft work plan and things of that nature
just to find those stop gap measures that are go, no go, type of things.
Hoaglun: Thank you.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Question on the administrative assistant. The proposal is just to fund that
with monies from two part-time positions. Who is going to pick up the load of those two
part-time positions?
Barry: Councilman Rountree, you mean who as in water or wastewater or who --
Rountree: Do you have personnel to do that or are the functioning as --
Barry: I see. I'm sorry, I misunderstood.
Rountree: Are we going to see a mechanic come back to us next year or a
pretreatment person full time next year? What's the deal?
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 11 , 2012
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Barry: No, sir. Thank you for the question. And I always appreciate those questions.
No. Those are two positions that have been vacant. The pretreatment inspector
position has been vacant for some time and with the addition of Mollie and oversight of
that group and consolidation with the assignments in that group we have determined
that we can eliminate that position and take whatever duties that that particular person
was going to do that would still need to be retained and get them covered by an
administrative assistant position. Additionally, on the part-time mechanic position that
was a position that was occupied until a recent retirement and, then, that person left our
-- left the city and we kept the position on the books to evaluate whether or not we
would need it before we went straight to hire. We have determined talking with the
wastewater division staff that it's not needed. You might recall I think two years ago we
added a full time mechanic. That full time mechanic gave us a little bit more capacity on
the mechanical side of maintenance and so with the retirement of the part-time position
we have decided that we are okay mechanic wise and so aren't recommending, you
know, that that position be either rehired in part time or full time. Additionally, the duties
of this position that we are recommending would help with records retention department
wide, not just to service the three divisions that we have talked about earlier, so --
Rountree: Thank you.
De Weerd: Okay. Any other questions on this? Okay. Shall we move to water then.
Or is that wastewater?
Bird: Water.
De Weerd: Water.
Rountree: Water.
Lavoie: Excuse me, Madam Mayor. I'm going to quickly try to reset this computer. We
seem to be having issues with it. So, I'm going to reset Excel real quick and I will be
right back.
De Weerd: Okay.
Rountree: Does that mean we have a short break?
De Weerd: Yeah. Why don't we take a five minute break.
(Recess: 1:01 p.m. to 1:12 p.m.)
Council budget decisions and discussion
De Weerd: Okay. We will get started again. Did you get everything reset, Todd? So,
Council, we are in the water section. Not treading water. Just looking at it.
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 11 , 2012
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Rountree: Madam Mayor, I just have a question I brought up about when do we -- when
do we budget for some of these if we know a project that we are anticipating doesn't
happen or it's kind of in flux? Is it better to anticipate -- put it in the budget or is it better
to add to the budget once we know the project is going to happen? I'm not opposed to
the budget item itself, but --
De Weerd: And that's particular to the extension for both water and sewer on --
Rountree: On Franklin.
De Weerd: -- Franklin Road.
Rountree: Yeah.
De Weerd: I know that Caleb was going to take a look at that, because, again, that
question did come up from a business owner. So, I -- I had heard that it was coming
this next budget year, but --
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Bird.
Bird: I -- I don't have any problem putting it in the budget, because we can always carry
it over and hopefully we will luck out -- let's start in FY-13. I don't mind leaving it in,
because we can always carry it. But I think some projects -- I'm like Councilman
Rountree, some of the projects that we know isn't going to we -- we don't need to be
shoving it in the budgets.
De Weerd: Well -- and I think that our Public Works staff and all the divisions have
been very conscientious about that and the statistics they gave us and percentages of
budget used is pretty impressive. So, I'm sure if they didn't anticipate they wouldn't be
doing it next year, you wouldn't be seeing it. But I'm --
Rountree: Madam Mayor. I'm okay either way. I just brought it up as we may be
looking at having to slide that one more year.
Hoaglun: And, Madam Mayor, question for Finance on this. That money, if it -- it stays
in the interest generating account until it's needed to transfer -- although there is not
much interest out there -- but you know, a million dollars at, you know --
De Weerd: At zero
Hoaglun: -- .001 percent generates something, but --
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 11 , 2012
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Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, yes, it does stay in the
investment account and, actually, we have most of our money in long term, which
generates a whole one percent interest, so --
Bird: Aren't we getting two?
Kilchenmann: No. We do -- and at one point in time with the Enterprise Fund money
we earned three or four million dollars a year in interest, but now not so much.
Hoaglun: Thank you.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I think I agree with the consensus that it makes sense to leave it in. If
necessary it can be carried over. The only thing that would be a caution to me is if we
are setting this money aside and there is some other higher priority project that could
have been done instead, but I don't believe that's the case. These -- these projects
need to be done at same point anyhow and I'm comfortable with a solution of leaving
them in for 2013 and if it slips to 2014, then, we carry it over.
De Weerd: Well, believe me, I think both water and sewer every once in awhile have an
opportunity to bring -- an opportunity to approve an amendment, because sometimes
ACHD all of a sudden comes up with a rogue project and we never want to lose an
opportunity to participate and get our system upgraded, but it's -- some things are hard
to predict. So, any other questions in regards to water?
Rountree: Again, it's not a question with respect to the budget, but the comments I
made I think at the last -- couple weeks ago at a Council meeting about getting some
information on the timing and prioritization of treatment on the wells. This has a further
study on -- I think Well 15. We have already -- we already know and are approved with
the study and the advancement on Well 21, but I'd like to see some rationale of how we
approach the wells and how we are going about establishing what treatment and when.
De Weerd: That's a future agenda topic .
Barry: We can provide that. I can't recall, Mr. Rountree -- we did come to the Council
some month or two ago to talk about water treatment. I don't know if you were present
or not, but what we will do is we will go back and look as we don't want to duplicate
information that you might already have if that, obviously, didn't answer your questions.
But we will look that up and if you weren't here we will get that information to you
separately. If you were and, then, what we will do is we will come back and do a brief
full Council presentation on answering and adjusting your questions. Does that sound
okay?
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 11 , 2012
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Rountree: That's fine.
De Weerd: Okay. So, we move to wastewater.
Rountree: I have nothing.
Hoaglun: I want to -- Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Uh-huh.
Hoaglun: Just on number 17, the journeyman electrician. Councilman Bird brought up
something I thought was interesting and that's the number of hours that electrical work
is being done and, then, 200 some hours and, then, jumping to a full-time person where
we have 2,080 hours. And that seems like a big jump. And, then, I'm wondering do you
need equipment, do you need a truck, do you need -- what do you need? I'm -- I'm not
so sure about number 17. So, who draws the short straw to come up and kind of
defend that one?
Barry: Councilman Bird, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Tiffany and I can
address that issue, but first to clarify -- I'm not sure maybe if we made this -- made this
clear or not. But the scenario that Mr. Bird had discussed about 250 hours was not
mathematically correct, all due respect, Mr. Bird.
Bird: Yeah. I just --
Rountree: Dropped a zero.
De Weerd: We just wanted you to say that. It might show up in your evaluation.
Barry: I'm sorry, Mr. Bird. I took one for the rest of the Council. No. If you do the math,
for example, of the 100,000 dollars that we have, essentially, identified as the cost that
this position would -- the work that comes with that cost that this position would,
essentially, do and you divided by that 2,080 hours, you get, essentially, about 50
dollars -- 48 dollars an hour of time. Now, you used an 80 dollars an hour figure. At 80
dollars an hour that comes up to 166,000 dollars. So, there is a difference there. It's
certainly not 250 hours and that's not what we have suggested, it's not what our data
shows. We are not going from 250 hours to 2,080 hours of work. That is just -- that's
not accurate. So, I needed to make that point, so that we knew we are dealing roughly
with the same level of work, but just in a different manner and what we believe is a more
cost prudent manner. So, with that I will turn it over to Ms. Floyd.
Floyd: So -- and maybe to just add to that, we had spoke during the breaks and
something that Councilman Zaremba had shared earlier, some things that we are
considering and maybe what we call some clean-up activities, to certainly evaluate our
plant and our water division and any areas -- other areas within the city and make sure
that we are covered as far as wiring is concerned and what kind of changes we may
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 11 , 2012
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need to make or in upgrades that need to be looked at, you know, we don't have
anyone really looking at that, they are contracted in, they come and they address a job.
Also with 2013 with the projects that you have seen come forward there will be much
work involved in there. If there is any chance we can use the in-house electrician to
address that and reduce the cost of the new buildings and things that we are working
on, that may be an opportunity for this position as well. We even considered that.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Hoaglun: Tiffany, are they going to need a vehicle? What do you anticipate in those --
some of those areas?
Floyd: There is definitely -- that is definitely something we that have thought about. I
think with our current fleet we could probably accommodate them. The bulk of the work
would be probably in the one location at the wastewater division. We do want to keep in
house some projects at water, but they are somewhat short lived and, you know, I think
that we could accommodate that with our current thinking -- did not account for -- that
I'm aware of any additional vehicle for that.
Hoaglun: And that's a true statement, the water and electricity is short lived.
Floyd: Thank you for agreeing, Councilman.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Tiffany -- and maybe somebody else has to answer this, but how many -- how
many service calls did we have last year? I mean what did we average? We averaged
three a month, two a month, ten a month, 30 a month?
Floyd: Madam Mayor, Councilman Bird, in terms of service calls related to electrical
type work?
Bird: Electrical service calls.
Floyd: The electrical-type work that we are referring to here is contracted projects. So,
the three to four vendors it's when there is something that needs to be installed, that
that type of number, Iwould -- I don't have that number handy as far as how many, you
know, times that they were called in. I do have the amount of dollars that we paid each
and every vendor for the type of work that we contract with them to come out and do.
Freeman: Tracy might know
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 11 , 2012
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Floyd: I will defer to Tracy Crane.
Crane: Madam Mayor, Councilman Bird, we do not have -- I don't have the statistics of
number of calls on the top of my head. I think we could probably get some data back
for you from Hansen. A lot of this is, as Tiffany said, we do have a couple of electricians
that are on call, if we have a drive or some piece of equipment that won't start, then, we
will call them out and try to do some emergency stuff. A lot of it won't show up maybe
on call, too, it will be that panel needs to be replaced and some proactive work that
wouldn't necessarily show up in those work orders, the emergency call out type work
orders. Most of our maintenance staff they will come in and find a way to get the
equipment running again and, then, we would call a nonemergency electrician say the
next day or whatever and have a wire pulled. I can certainly see if our asset analyst can
look and see, you know, how many calls that we actually had that were electrical
related, but as far as having that number --
Bird: And to be truthful with you, if you called them out it's usually reactive not
proactive.
Crane: Typically, yes.
Bird: And to put it -- Tracy, do you think there is enough proactivity that would save us
money in the long run by wear and tear on the equipment by having afull-time
electrician who I understand is not going to be able to go through every piece of
equipment every month or every day. In your opinion do you -- can you justify a
journeyman electrician on a full-time basis out there?
Crane: So, Councilman Bird, I would say that the -- the enhancement is to share it with
water and its well, too, so I -- just to make that point, so that it would have been a
shared position between water or wastewater. I think that our facility is big enough now
that I would defer sort of to the financial analysis first to -- you know, does it make cost
-- is it cost effective, does it make sense. If the dollars and cents workout, then, in my
opinion, yes, we could utilize them -- some question of whether they could do some kind
of SCADA programing, but even if we had a candidate that didn't, we could get them
trained and that would save us a ton and, quite honestly, the whole industry is going
that direction. We get more technical and more computers controlling everything and
more of the prints and those kind of things. I would also add, you know, every one of
these projects they bring all the electrical prints and PNIDs and I confess to you they
just look like lines on a piece of paper, so it would be good to have someone in house
that you could run that through that's sort of an electrician and say what are these
drawing and things, they make sense. If you get to those electrical drawings and -- a lot
of times they are way over my head and so --
Bird: And I understand that, but somebody stated that we could use them on -- on our
bid -- our bid out projects, well, you're not going to do that. If you got -- I mean the thing
-- and another thing I fear, to be truthful, we get one this year, we give you one this
year, you're going to find out that there is a two man job there, because go look back
Meridian City Council Budget Hearinc
July 11 , 2012
Page 54 of 57
and see how many times you had to have two electricians on that job. Next year we are
going to have a request for another journeyman electrician; right?
Floyd: That is not in our plans.
De Weerd: Good answer, Tiffany.
Bird: I tell you what --
Crane: That is not in our plan.
Bird: I tell you what, I don't say -- we try this for a year. If you really feel you could keep
one busy and really need one out there and in the long run it will save the city money,
between your two departments, I can support it.
Floyd: Thank you, Councilman.
Crane: Appreciate that very much.
De Weerd: Thank you. Anything else on item?
Hoaglun: No. I agree.
De Weerd: Okay. Council, anything else in the Enterprise budget request in front of
you? If not, that is it for the Enterprise Fund. Stacy, any final comments?
Kilchenmann: Amen.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
Kilchenmann: Oh. I was just going to clarify that we did not include depreciation
expense in the summary this year, so that 5.7 million that you see is use of fund
balance, that's similar to the General Fund, that's actually use of fund balance for capital
projects. So, operating wise they are in the good and, then, they are using certain
portions of the fund balance to fund capital projects. But other than that I just want to
thank everyone again for their hard work. I think we started this process, what, in
January, February and we worked on our capital improvement plan, actually, forever it
seems like. So, thank you to the departments, the Council, for participating in the
process and the Mayor for driving it, making sure we get it done and also her active
participation.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 11 , 2012
Page 55 of 57
Bird: I want to thank you guys in Finance -- all employees and departments. You don't
know how much easier -- while our budgets are a lot larger than they were ten years
ago, you don't know how much easier the budget process is, because starting with
Tammy on through the Finance Department and to each one of you departments, I don't
know about you, but I think they feel the same way, I appreciate all this work that you
guys put forward, so we don't have to ask a bunch of questions and we also know that
you don't put much fluff in it. We just have to watch Tom.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Did we want to take John McCormick up on his offer to discuss City Hall
backup power more or just leave it as it is for now or --
Bird: Leave it as it is.
Zaremba: We know it needs a little further looking at, but leave the number in that we
chose yesterday. I also would thank everybody. I wasn't subject to the older budget
process, but as long as I have been in this position it's -- it gets better every year and I
do appreciate how everybody works together and weighs each other's enhancements
and each other's needs and the five year trends that Todd proposes to everybody, all of
that makes the process easier and when it comes to us budget -- balanced budget first
we clearly understand if we change something, then, we need to change something
else equivalently, but knowing that it was balanced to begin with certainly sets us off in
the right direction and I appreciate that the Mayor and the department heads and all of
the other wonderful people put into it and Finance Department as well. So, thank you
all for making our job easier.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: I know there has been some reflection and musing about ten years ago. Igo
back to the 20th century and say that we are a century ahead of that time now. It was
brutal 20 years ago and by the time you got done you really didn't know what you had
or why you had it, but you moved forward. The thing we did have back there was some
vision for Meridian and the vision for Meridian was it was going to be a great place and
it was going to grow and by golly it did and it did because of the previous folks and folks
like you that have given the time and the energy and the care and enthusiasm for your
community to make it work and our budget process now I think is a reflection of our
community. It's open. It's real. If you want to know where the money goes, if you can
read and you're patient, you can find almost every dollar and it's terrific and I thank you
all for your time and the Mayor for her leadership.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 11 , 2012
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Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Do we need a motion to publish this for the public hearing?
De Weerd: Yes, we will need to. I think that Mr. Hoaglun had a comment and, then, we
will do that.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, thank you. Just a quick comment. Councilman Rountree
went back to the 20th century. I will go up to the nightly news last night. I don't know if
any of you saw the mayor of Scranton cut everybody's -- all employees, fire and police
included, down to minimum wage because they are in such financial dire straits. In a
town about our size. I think they are 70, 80 thousand, something like that, and they are
looking at a property tax of 78 percent, which the citizens just can't handle and -- that's
the increase on top of what they already pay and -- and so we are not in that situation
because of the work of the Mayor and the employees of this city and we appreciate that.
I hope Public Works doesn't feel like you're picked on. I mean your Enterprise Fund,
you don't have the competition like the General Fund, you know, all those folks are
scrambling for the same pie, you're Enterprise Fund, that's -- but, you know, we
recognize the fact, as you do, it comes out of the same pocket, tax payers, rate payers,
it -- because it's your pockets as well. So, we try to go through this as carefully as
possible and you already have -- we sit through the process as liaisons and we really
appreciate the work that goes into this and what you do to reach this point. So, I hope
you don't mind us poking a little bit more, but just what we have to do. Anyway -- but
thank you all.
De Weerd: Well, I will just put in my two cents. I think that Council has recognized that
there is a great deal of work that goes beyond -- behind this and I will extend my
appreciation to the Council as well and each one of you as Council Members attended
our good cop, bad cop, a show that Todd and I provided with each of the departments
as they came in and did the line by line item discussion and that makes a difference.
Certainly the participatory approach that we have in setting our budgets and really
scrubbing them and looking at every line has benefitted everyone from those that
manage the budgets as we move forward to those who, then, anticipate them as we go
into the next year and I will give kudos to the Finance Department and also to the
directors that they look holistically at this and as Charlie goes back a couple of decades
to -- to make his comments, those elected officials at that time were practicing that fund
management model of save and spend and planning for the future and they gave us a
solid foundation to really operate on. There is not very many cities that have
experienced the kind of growth that we have and we have done it relatively gracefully.
Certainly sometimes it felt like we were drinking out of a fire hose while we were doing it
and when we had a chance to breathe and reflect and gather up and move forward we
saw some areas we wanted to improve upon, but the city has a lot to be proud of and I
certainly appreciate working with each and every one of you employees and electeds
Meridian City Council Budget Hearing
July 11, 2012
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alike. So we a reciate that. Certainly big kudos -- I know that the Finance
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De artment u until the great recession was kind of the dreaded department in the city
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and now the really are our heroes, because their attention to detail and conservative
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forecastin has real) kept us in a solid position and that -- and that s working together
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with all of us. So, ood job to Enterprise Fund, good job to General Fund, and
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Communit Development. This is a good team. So, Mr. Zaremba, I would love to have
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a motion.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor, incorporating the amendments that we made yesterday and
today, I move thatwe publish this budget forthe public hearing.
Rountree: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Madam Clerk, will you call
roll.
Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
~. De Weerd: I would now entertain a motion to adjourn.
Rountree: So moved.
Bird: Second.
De Weerd: All those in favor.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 1:39 P.M.
(AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS)
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