2013-01-08~~ivl E IDIAN~-
iDAHO
CITY COUNCIL WORKSHOP
MEETING AGENDA
Tuesday, January 08, 2013 at 3:00 PM
1. Roll-Call Attendance
X David Zaremba X Brad Hoaglun
O Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird
X Mayor Tammy de Weerd
2. Pledge of Allegiance
3. Adoption of the Agenda Adopted
4. Consent Agenda Approved
A. Approval of Zero Dollar "Data Transfer Agreement between
Ada County and The City of Meridian For Delivery of Certain
County Computerized Data Elements" with Ada County
5. Community ItemslPresentations
A. Senior Center Presentation
Continued to February 12, 2013
6. Items Moved From Consent Agenda None
7. Department Reports
A. City Council: City Council Department Liaison Appointments
B. Legal/Human Resources: Strategic Plan Update
C. Transportation Task Force and Traffic Safety Commission
Joint Report: Discussion on the Potential Establishment of
the City Transportation Commission
D. Community Development: Ada County. Title 8 and 9
Amendments for Meridian Area of City Impact, Unincorporated
Ada County
Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda -Tuesday, January O8, 2013 Page 1 of 2
All materials presented at public meetings shall become property of the City of Meridian.
Anyone desiring accommodation for disabilities related to documents and/or hearing,
please contact the City Clerk's Office at 888-4433 at least 48 hours prior to the public meeting.
E. Public Works: FY 2012 Project Close Out Report
F. Public Works: Source Water Protection Area of Drilling
Concern Presentation
G. Information Services/Police Department: Update on Network
Connectivity Between City Hall and the Police Department
8. Future Meeting Topics
Adjourned at 6:22 p.m.
Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda -Tuesday, January O8, 2013 Page 2 of 2
All materials presented at public meetings shall become property of the City of Meridian.
Anyone desiring accommodation for disabilities related to documents and/or hearing,
please contact the City Clerk's Office at 868-4433 at least 48 hours prior to the public meeting.
IVleridian City Council January >3, 2013
A meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 3:00 p.m., Tuesday,
January 8, 2013, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd.
Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, David Zaremba, Keith Bird, and Brad
Hoaglun.
Members Absent: Charlie Rountree.
Others Present: Bill Nary, Jaycee Holman, Bruce Chatterton, Jamie Leslie, Parry
Palmer, Warren Stewart, Kyle Radek, Steve Siddoway, and Dean Willis.
Item 1: Roll-call Attendance:
Roll call.
X David Zaremba X Brad Hoaglun
O Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird
X Mayor Tammy de Weerd
De Weerd: Thank you for joining us at the workshop for the City Council. For the
record we will just head right into this next one and for the record it is Tuesday, January
8th. It's three minutes after 3:00. We will start with roll call attendance, Madam Clerk.
Item 2: Pledge of Allegiance
De Weerd: Thank you. Item No. 2 is our Pledge of Allegiance. If you will all join us for
the pledge to our flag.
(Pledge of Allegiance recited.)
Item 3: Adoption of the Agenda
De Weerd: Item No. 3 is adoption of the agenda.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Mr. Hoaglun: There will one change on today's agenda. 5-A, the Senior Center
presentation, we will have a request when we get to that to move that to February.
Other than that, though, Mayor, I move adoption of the agenda as amended.
Bird: Second.
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January 8, 2013
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De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to adopt the agenda as amended. All those
in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Item 4: Consent Agenda
A. Approval of Zero Dollar "Data Transfer Agreement between
Ada County and The City of IVleridian For Delivery of Certain
County Computerized Data Elements" with Ada County
De Weerd: Item 4 is our Consent Agenda.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: I move approval of the Consent Agenda and the Mayor be authorized to sign
and the Clerk to attest.
Bird: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the Consent Agenda. Madam
~~ Clerk.
Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, absent; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Item 5: Community Items/Presentations
A. Senior Center Presentation
De Weerd: Item No. 5 has been requested to continue to February 12th. Do I have a
motion?
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: A bit of explanation before I make the motion. They have a change in
bookkeepers at the Senior Center. They have not been able to get all their year-end
numbers together that they wanted to talk about, so they requested that this be moved
to the February workshop and I told them I think that we would accommodate that
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January 8, 2013
Page 3 of 62
request, so I move that we move the Senior Center presentation to the February 12th
workshop.
Zaremba: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to continue the senior center item to the next
workshop agenda on February 12th. All those in favor say aye. All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Item 6: Items Nloved From Consent Agenda
De Weerd: There were,no items moved from the Consent Agenda.
Item 7: ®epartment Reports
A. City Council: City Council ®epartment Liaison Appointments
De Weerd: So, we will move right into Department Reports and I will turn this over to
Mr. President, Councilman Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Thank you, Madam Mayor. For the 2013 year, for those that might be in the
audience that don't know, we have members of the City Council who serve as liaisons
to the different departments within the city and we try to keep folks moving into different
departments to keep on top of things and make sure they know the personnel and the
issues a little deeper than normal, but for 2013 we will have at Community
Development, which includes Planning and Zoning, Building Services and Economic
Development, Keith Bird will be the liaison to that. For Finance and our Utility Billing
and we are combining Legal and HR into this one as well, that will be David Zaremba.
For Fire Department will be me. For Mayor and Information Services, which is now City
Clerk and IT, I also serve as their liaison. Parks and Recreation Department will be
David Zaremba. The Police Department will be Keith Bird and for Public Works it will be
Charlie Rountree. So, those are set for 2013 and didn't hear any audible groans out
there among department heads, I guess we are okay. So, Madam Mayor, I guess we
don't need a motion on that, do we? Or do we? We just --
De Weerd: No.
Hoaglun: -- say what it is. Okay. Oh, I feel like a king now, you know.
De Weerd: Oh, my God. Maybe we do. Just because. Okay. Well, thank you.
appreciate you all working on that list and I'll make sure to get this out to our department
directors.
Hoaglun: Thank you.
B. Legal/Human Resources: Strategic Plan Update
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De Weerd: Okay. Item No. 7-B is our legal and HR team with their strategic plan
update. So, I will turn this over to Mr. Nary.
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, let me -- let me hand out some handouts
first, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council,
guess as Jaycee Holman is handing those out, I just had some preliminary remarks.
This is the beginning of my eighth year here in this position with the city and, you know,
it is still a privilege to come to work every day. It's not just a privilege to work for a great
city and to work with some great people and some great employees, but the
opportunities and challenges that we have in our department are always interesting,
never dull, and very valued and very important to our community and I know for myself
and the folks in our department we really feel that. We feel very connected to what
goes on in our city. We feel very connected both inside our building and outside our
building and that what we do really matters to our community and that's a great
gratification for anyone and 2012 was not unlike any other years I have been here, lots
of great interesting things that were very positive, lots of great interesting things that
weren't as positive, challenges that we really have embraced and move forward, but
more than anything it's a privilege to work for this Mayor and this Council and with the
people I work with every day. The folks in our department are truly professionals in
what we do and they take this very seriously and I know all of you know that, so I'm
preaching to the choir and I .get that,. but .I want others. to know that as vvell. They take it
very seriously, because what we do matters to us as much as we know it matters to our
employees and so it's -- it's a great opportunity to stand up here in front of you each
year and give you some sense of what we have been doing, but also the opportunity to
acknowledge that as well, because we do really feel like this is a great city and a great
place to be. So, with that we will talk a little bit about our strategic presentation, kind of
where we have come and where we are going as a city. Success comes hand in hand.
One of the things that we have said many times in the Human Resources -City Attorney
Department is that our success is really with others. We work side by side with all of
our departments to help make them successful. There are many things that we do that
really aren't our agenda moving forward, it's to help -- whether it's the Mayor and the
Council, whether it's a department's initiative or need, that we are there to help make
those things happen and that really is a great satisfaction to all of us when those things
can actually occur. Here is our current organizational structure. You can see myself.
We are a little smaller than we used to be. As you know we have made some changes
over the last year and we have taken the IT section of our department and we have
moved that over to Information Services, so this is what we currently have in relation to
both our legal services, our risk management needs, as well as our human resources
needs and, then, we currently have one vacancy in our position with our admin
assistant. If you didn't know, our former admin assistant Christie Boucher has moved
back to the Fire Department, darn them, and she's going to be a great asset to them as
she has been for us, so we are currently in the process of filing that position. Partners
at work. You know, when we were trying figure out the different sections of our
presentation and how to really hit home with you how we really feel as a department,
how we work, I really tried to put some thought into each one of these things and what
relates or what can we say for our -- each one of these sections of our department, what
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January 8, 2013
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are we trying to do. Partners at work really does epitomize to me human resources.
We truly are a partner with our departments. We really want to help them succeed
whether it's in the recruitment stage, whether it's in the retention stage, whether it's
dealing with employee problems or issues or concerns, whether it's employees exiting
the city for whatever reason, we want to partner with them to help make them work the
best, to work the most efficiently to succeed and carry out the initiatives that they have
and we feel being a partner with them really epitomizes what human resources is all
about. Human resources is currently made up besides myself, Crystal Ritchie is our HR
manager, Erin Montemurro is our HR generalist and, then, also additionally, besides our
admin support was support, which supports legal and HR, also Erin Lammers, who
provides our benefit support. So, our first step in dealing with human resources is
recruiting. So, getting them in the door for the city. In the top left corner that's a job
posting that we have posted out on the Internet, as well as in advertisements or post
cards that we will send out for folks to, again, to get some identification to the city and
human resources. This tells you how many applications received and processed for
how many jobs we had. That is not atypo -- 4,280 is not a typo and the numbers of
applications. Now, we all know we have had a down turn in the economy, so our job --
our job positions have grown significantly in application and part of it -- besides the
needs of everybody wanting a job, there is a necessity out there for a lot of folks to
apply for jobs whether they necessarily want this particular job or not, based on whether
it's unemployment .or other needs, .they may be applying seeing what they can get or
what's available out there. But every one of them, whether they want to job or not, we
have to review it, we have to screen it, we have to make sure it fits whatever job
requirements there are, we have to make sure we comply with all the legal requirements
of those types of things, whether it's veterans points, whether it's determining whether
or not there is any other accommodations are necessary -- all of those have to be
screened. Again, we partner with the departments extensively for this. I'd like to say
that we review every single one of these all by ourselves, but we couldn't possibly do
that, there is not enough hours in the day to do that all by ourselves. We do screen
them, but we also work closely with the departments, the hiring managers, the support
staff in the various departments to help process a number of these applications. Many
of the jobs -- recently the Mayor may recall we had a -- an inquiry from a citizen that
was disappointed that we don't have enough entry-level jobs and, to be honest, we
don't. We don't have a lot of jobs that don't require some skill, some certification, a
license, an educational component of some sort. We just don't have a lot of what I
would call general -- access general positions. So, again, we partner with the
departments to deal with that, to address that expertise that's necessary, so that we
can, again, find the right fit for the right position for the right person in our departments,
because anyone who understands human resources or understands the recruitment
process in human resources knows your greatest value and your greatest investment is
on the front end of hiring. You will deal with employee issues and problems significantly
less if you hire the right person and there is a lot of time and effort that goes into doing
that and we caution departments often to be thoughtful in the job selection, to be
thoughtful in the recruitment process, because, again, the right fit today, because I just
need somebody, may be a lot of issues later when you don't get the right person in the
right place and we'd much rather take some time and some opportunity to really feel
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that this is the right position and the right person for that position than we address it
later through discipline, through exiting, through something else. It takes even more
time and, then, you have expended a lot of training dollars and time as well. So, we
really do spend a lot of time -- 266 hours of interviews -- again 90 days average to fill a
vacant position and, again, of course, that varies greatly, but the hours of interviews,
again, money well spent, time well invested up front. We do have a human resources
person that either sits in every one of those application interviews at some level or
coaches and counsels the departments on how to do that, to make sure we don't run
into any of the problems, whether it's a discriminatory hiring process where there is a
claim that we have somehow targeted people improperly, we have used improper
questions, improper responses for hiring decisions and the like. You know, we have not
had those types of complaints in the time I have been here. We'd like to keep that.
That's a track record that we actually would like to maintain in not having those types of
issues and having us very involved and embedded in the hiring process as a way to
prevent that. Our next subject to address is seasonal employment. With the National
Healthcare Act there are some things that are going to affect how we have been doing
seasonal employment historically and we may have to re-address that. We have looked
at that with departments. I'm trying to find a different way -- whether it's contracting out,
out-sourcing that service -- that hasn't been a very good fit for departments right now.
They don't -- they really like the opportunity to really feel like the people, whether they
are seasonal employees or regular employees .of the city, that they know they work .for
the City of Meridian. That they know who they work for, they know what their
responsibilities and accountabilities are to our community and sometimes when you
out-source that they think they work for Manpower or they think they work for Personnel
Plus, but don't necessarily think they work for us and that's been a concern. So, we are
going to study that, we would need to look at that, we have got to address, obviously,
the cost of seasonal employment and the impacts on our citizens and our budgets to do
that and is there a better way. So, we don't have an answer today, but that's something
we are certainly looking at as we move forward in the future. Next the employee
development program. You know, we are extremely proud of this program and our
kick-off with this. We did present this to you awhile back, so this is really nothing --
nothing new, just to let you know it's going well. This is exactly what we were hoping to
get as a program for our employees and we have also been getting the feedback that,
again, knock on wood, it's been exactly what we were hoping for. Very positive, very
relevant. One of the things I tried to emphasize with departments when we rolled out
this development program was what we were trying to do was create a training program
or curriculum that was relevant to their job. We have all had people or ourselves attend
conferences or trainings in other areas or in other places and we sort of took the good
and threw out the bad. We took the stuff that seemed really relevant and we said, well,
we don't do that or we don't do this or that's nice what they told us, but there is 20
minutes of that class that we would never use because it doesn't relate to us. We tried
to customize our program and I will give kudos to Crystal Ritchie in really developing
this program to fit our employees' needs. We have met endlessly with the directors of
the departments to make sure we were relevant to the employees and meeting the
needs of the department, but also, again, trying to help our employees understand how
does our city work, how do we operate, what's important, and as they move up in our
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~ city, as they progress, whether it's through the promotion process or even not actually
being promoted, but moving up in responsibilities within our city, even in the same
position, how does our budgets work, what do you folks, as the Mayor and the Council,
look at annually. What are you trying to assess. How do they understand that. So,
they understand how our city works as a whole. It is very unique in our state. In my
discussions with other cities they -- they have the problem of either one of two things.
They are either too large and they have too many employees and it's too expensive to
do that or they' are too small and they don't have the resources or the personnel to
support it. We are at a perfect sweet spot for our city that we have both the right
personnel on board, we have the right level of buy-in and investment by the Mayor and
Council to allow us to invest the time and money into doing this and we have the right
buy-in by our employees. They want this. They have asked for training relevant to their
job to give them a better since of the city and their place and where they fit in and how
they bring value to their job and how -- again, how we do different things in the city that,
again, they may have heard a piece of or tangentially and how they can really be a part
of it. We are very proud of this and we really -- I'm excited as this continues to grow.
Here is the things that we have done so far. We have had five courses. We have had
31 different sessions, 440 participants, 982 training hours. This is since October. So,
October, November, December. This is how many different types of courses we have
put on and the things. We are going to continue to roll them out. This is the -- the
proposed training schedule. Let me put proposed and tentative.. We want to make sure
that we are going to be very fluid on these as we told folks when they have asked us,
they say, well, if I don't take respectful workplace today am I going to get a chance to
take it again and, yes, you will. Or if I don't take performance review overview right
now, can I take it later? And, yes, you will. But we want to roll things out in an orderly
fashion and also things that are timely and relevant. So, you're not going to probably
get the performance -- performance management overview in June when you're
probably not going to be doing any of those, but you might get in the fall. But we
wanted to create at least a template for folks that we could provide to employees to give
some sense of when is the next thing coming, when is the next opportunity for me to do
this and also allows the department ability to plan. We know this is an impact to
departments in trying to get employees into these classes and we don't want to impact
them in a negative way, so we have given the departments a very broad discretion on
when people can participate, how many -- whether they have to let them off, how they
want to do it. It's totally in the department's discretion, but we thought if we could
provide them at least a calendar or a template of what's coming, then, they have a way
to space out who can do it, when they can provide that, when it would come around a
second time so they could take it later and so that's what this is for. And, please, feel
free to stop me as you know you can at any point if you have questions.
De Weerd: Bill?
Nary: Yes, ma'am.
De Weerd: I believe that you have gotten some feedback on the program. Can you
give us an idea or comments on what you have heard?
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Nary: Yes. Absolutely. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I mean the -- the
employees -- the employees have really taken very strongly to the types of courses.
The only thing, honestly, from a negative standpoint is one of the things that we are
working on that wasn't part of the original roll out, but is part of this year that we are
going to try to get some courses actually done at your workplace, so that we don't have
to always bring people to City Hall or to a work site and bring them out of the
departments. That's kind of the next thing we are looking at. But as to the quality of the
training and the instructors that we have had, the type of information that's being
provided, all very very positive. You know, there are challenges, as you can imagine.
We have fire crews and police officers that work 24/7 and work shifts and work
graveyards and those kind of things. So, there is still challenges. But we -- part of the
reason why that was intentional that we spanned out when the completion could be, but
the feedback has been, again, very positive. People have liked the trainers that we
have had. They like the information that's being provided. Many of them have said I
have never heard some of these things before, so they really appreciated really getting
that and getting a consistent message. That's the other -- other side is, again, when
you send one work crew to this conference and a different one to a different one, well,
then, they are going to get different messages from different places. Here our intention
was to give them the same message consistently from the curriculum. So, whether or
.,not .Crystal .might be an. instructor or myself.. or Kathy, who .has .been our contracted.
instructor, those are folks, again, are teaching from a curriculum that we have
established ourself. This -- a curriculum we have customized to fit us. So, it isn't the
person delivering it that's critical, other than the message and the method of delivery,
but the information is the same. So, it's been very very positive. We have been very
pleased with the results.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Bill, I just want to ask when we have a new employee -- and not that we have
had many new employees over the last several years, but how do you work them into
that? Is there a time period before you start them into that, make sure they are going to
stick with the city or how does that work?
Nary: Thank you. That's a great question. And we had that question come up,
because, you know, we had a suggested time table in which to complete the program
and -- and it's 18 months for the average general employee. Now, we do start when
they start, but, again, because the discretion is in the department as to when they can
participate, we want to make sure the department has the flexibility that if you have a
brand new employee and as they are learning their job it probably doesn't make sense
to send them to the -- some of these trainings within the first two or three months of
employment. So, you know, we don't require any of it. The department gets to decide
that. Now, some of these things -- shortly, then, within the first six months or beyond it
would be ideal if they could take the respectful workplace or accountability or ethics and
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those types of courses, because we think it's very relevant no matter what job they
have. But the discretion is totally in the department's call as to when to allow
employees to do that, when to give them the time away from learning their job before
they start taking the classes.
Hoaglun: Okay. Thank you.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Bill, on -- on these classes and stuff, with our technology, is there some of them
where you don't have to have interaction or anything that could be done over the
computers, so that we don't have to bring everybody -- that they could actually sit at
their station and get this? Is that -- is that possible to do on some of them? And I know
all of them you can't, you got to have some interaction with some of them.
Nary: Absolutely. A lot of that's going to be driven by the content. I mean you're
exactly right, Mr. Bird, there is some of the content that having it at the working station
training is -- is fine. We found that when we used the ICRMP training program a year
ago that there are certain things, that are., very easily .done at a work station and we are
working with IT to get those up and running. But we felt at the outset really we wanted
to make sure that people kind of understood the program, so we did -- we did gear them
all as in-person training course, but that was the next -- that was the commitment of the
next phase that we would roll out is allowing it in their station, because, again, we have
remote sites between water and wastewater and the like that always bringing people to
City Hall or trying to do it at a remote site isn't always very practical and we have done
them at remote sites as well. We haven't done every course here. We have done them
in other -- in other facilities, but that is exactly our objective is to make sure it's available
that way as well.
Bird: Great.
Nary: Our next program that we really are very proud of and really took off I think in
2012 is our Youth Work Life Skills program. If you recall in 2011 we had a vacant
position in HR that we didn't fill and we came to the Council and asked if we could take
the funding that was not used and create this program for youth in our community and
the purpose of that was not to hire more people, this is not a temp agency type of
program we were trying to run, but we were actually trying to create a program where
kids could actually get real work experience and real life experience in applying for
positions within the city and it would be, really, a marriage between that goal of
providing that opportunity, as well as providing some assistance in departments for a lot
of needs of things that were necessary, but couldn't get done. I mean in the hierarchy
of things they were things that couldn't get prioritized in front of other items, but yet were
necessary, whether it was inventory, filing, or a variety of different things or relief and so
in the summertime we felt it might be an opportunity to do that. So, we did that in 2011.
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January 8, 2013
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We asked for some funding in 2012 to do that. We also added it as an enhancement,
so, now, actually, because of the success of the two years of it you did fund it in 2013 or
a replacement going forward as a regular program of the city. So, just to update you,
we had 32 applications received in 2012. We had interviewed 30 of those people.
Twenty-one of them were selected for positions. The 2,500 and 28 hours was a
thousand more hours than we had the previous year. So, again, lots of value into our
departments. We try to spread the wealth around a lot. We try to give kids, as often as
possible, more than area or department to work in. So, some that preferred to work
outside we tried to work them outside as much as possible. Those that preferred to
work inside we tried to work them inside as much as possible, but we didn't have them
always work in the same place. The objective was to provide a very broad range of
experience with the city, so they might be working outside one day at Public Works and
they might be working outside one day at wastewater versus water. Or they might be
working with the fire department or they might be working in fire education, but to be
outside. Or they did some -- we did surveying for our business registry. We did a lot of
different thing to get different experiences and, again, we also moved them internally if
they worked in wastewater or Public Works or community development or fire or parks,
there were places that we could find other places for these youth or these teens to work
in and for many of these folks what was really gratifying to me is that many of these kids
couldn't get hired anywhere else and part of the reason we came up with this idea is we
recognize. that, with, the.. economy that there were a .lot of adults. working .in jobs that in
the past were hired by teens. You know, most of us had that experience as a teenager
that you got a job at a fast food place or you got a job at a restaurant or a car wash or
somewhere else, but that was kind of the entry level jobs and a lot of teens got hired for
that. Now with the economy the way it was there has been a lot of adults -- not just
young adults, getting hired in the same job. So, the access for teens was more limited,
so we felt the opportunities again become more limited, because if you don't get that
first job when you're 15 or 16 --and some of our kids that were hired for this I think were
14 -- when do you get it? I mean if you can't get hired at -- at a fast food restaurant at
16 are you going to wait until you're 22, how do you ever find a job when you're 18 if
you've never even had a life experience of interviewing, filling out an application, or
filling out a resume, working in an adult environment. How do you ever get that
experience. Anecdotally -- I mean I looked around, I think I told the Mayor, I think if you
looked in our community in 2012 I think Wahoos and Pinz probably hires more
teenagers than most of our other jobs just due to that nature of the jobs they have there.
I put City of Meridian right behind that. I mean we had -- we had 21 teenagers -- again
some of them in their very first job they have ever had -- some that couldn't work
anywhere else, because they can't drive, so they wouldn't be able to get here because
they had somebody that worked here to bring them here, but someplace -- they couldn't
work anywhere else and we could provide them that opportunity. We brought it in under
budget, which is always a good thing. We, again, used all the different departments,
several divisions use the intern and I think our experience and our feedback from the
departments was it was successful. The kids were receptive, the kids were -- the kids
were engaged, they really were good workers, they really were developing work ethic
and I think for some of the parents and some of the kids, again, it was a positive
experience for them. This is an opportunity that may not have been available elsewhere
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except for the City of Meridian to provide them. This is the things we added to the 2012
program, so they had a point of contact. One person in our department sort of
managed this. Erin Montemurro was our primary point of contact for all of the youth in
it. They gave them feedback for their interviews. You know, again, you're 15 years old,
you have never interviewed for a job, you have no idea what's appropriate and what's
not. What's a good thing to say in a job interview. What's really not a good thing to say
in a job interview. Someone needs to tell you that. What you find out there in the
working world, right, the way we find that out is because they don't hire you and nobody
tells you why. So, we wanted to provide a better thing. This would be a better way to
present this, this would be a better way to present your resume, to present your
experience. Again, we have a lot of folks that don't have a lot of experience and we
expected that. But wanted them to be able to show how to showcase what you know of
what you can do as best you can for future jobs. Again, we provided them feedback.
We gave them work schedules that were set and orderly. We tried to work around
them. Which, again, is not very common in the private sector. We had the flexibility
because of the support from our departments that if you're going to grandma's for two
weeks we can take you off the schedule for two weeks. If you have cheer camp for a
week we can take you off the schedule for a week. If you're going to be here for part of
the week, but you have got football camp in the afternoon, we can work you in the
morning. We can find a way to make it worthwhile for you and make it worthwhile for us
and make it meaningful, but we can work ,around .your needs...,Again,..not very many
employers can do that, but with the support of the Mayor and Council in supporting it
and our departments in supporting it, we could make it work. We were very pleased
and, again, we got a lot of positive feedback from the departments as well. Here is what
we want to do to enhance that in 2013. We want to help them develop a resume.
Again, some of our kids -- I mean might be on the front end of the work experience at 14
or 15 years old, but some of them are only requiring that they still have to be in high
school. So, some were actually 18 and still in high school and so these are folks that
are right on the cusp of entering the work force, maybe regularly. We want to help them
develop a resume. We want to help them update it at the end of the summer so they
can add on to the resume all the skills that they learned while they were here, so that,
again, they can present themselves the best they can for their next employer or their
next opportunity. We also, again, want to provide them some opportunity to be briefed
on what works and what didn't. Again, we have been very fortunate the quality of youth
we have had in this program have been very high. High achievers, people that are very
interested, very motivated. We want to keep that and one of the ways to keep that is to
give them feedback. They need to know what worked and what didn't. You know, if you
forgot to call your point of contact person -- forgot to call Erin that you couldn't be in
today, remember, if you worked at another place they might fire you for that. We may
not, but the next place might. Those are things that, again, until you have had that life
experience and no one to tell you, you need someone to help you with that. So, again,
we want to provide them the opportunity and the feedback so they know what works
and what doesn't. Questions about that? The other thing that we did in 2012 on the
human resources side is reviewed our performance review evaluation form. These are
the PADs. And now the -- a lot of the employees -- the word isn't necessarily a good
thing and we went out to our employees to get their feedback on what aPAD --
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De Weerd: Come one. That's an understatement.
Nary: I know. PAD was a four letter word for a lot of employees and this is some of the
feedback and I won't read it all to you. This is some of the feedback we got from
employees. They didn't feel they owned it. They didn't understand why it was
necessary. They didn't always understand it. They sometimes felt it was longer than
needed to be. They thought it was poorly formatted. It was confusing. There was a lot
of different mantras that were used in it. We had the Meridian First, Meridian Way. We
had a six month review. We had a work plan. We had a strategic category that we
didn't always understand. Just a lot of that they didn't really like. I mean I think most
people in my experience have no real concern in a positive environment like the City of
Meridian, I don't think employees have a real concern of being evaluated. What
employees want is they want it to feel fair. They want it to feel like it's fair and objective.
Now, to a degree. All of us know that performance review is a subjective experience to
some degree as well. But you like to feel as an employee that there is some objective
standard that exists and some methodology that's consistent from one department to
the next as to what's being considered or what's being evaluated and with the PAD, as
well intentioned as it was maybe ten years ago, it sort of lost its way there and it wasn't
very clear to folks what we were trying to do or what it was trying to -- what kind of
outcome. we .were trying to get and it was inconsistent among the. departments. So,
there was ahigh -- moderate to high degree of dissatisfaction and I would lean more
towards the high degree of dissatisfaction by employees. So, we said what do we do
with that. This is what the employees wanted. They wanted it -- they wanted it to be
easy to use and they wanted it to be somewhat intuitive to understand what are we
trying to get to. We wanted it trained. That makes sense. They wanted it to followed all
the levels of the departments. So, they wanted to make sure that Mayor and Council,
the directors of the departments, the senior leadership, their first line supervisors, that
everybody was on the same page and what does this form mean when we talk about
these different areas of emphasis or responsibilities or accountabilities, then, it's not --
mean we recognize that being a firefighter, being a police officer are not the same job,
but when we are talking about a lot of it, we are talking about levels of accountability,
professionalism, customer service, things that -- we all have a general understanding
what those mean, but they wanted to make sure it meant the same everywhere.
Explainable. Understandable. Again, not -- not avery -- not a very difficult thing to ask
for. Classroom training. Online training. Flexibility. That was one of the things the
departments wanted on both the employees and the senior level or senior management
of the department. Again, not one size fits all. Some departments need something
specific. They need some things that are very job specific to their positions, as well as
the work -- the work ethic, the teamwork, the collaboration, the leadership, the customer
service, but they also need things that were very specific and particular to their
department. Original preparation time on a per employee basis. I mean there was folks .
that this takes hours and hours and hours and there was feedback that my -- my
supervisor appeared to take five minutes. So, it really is something that, again, people
want to feel like, you know, if I'm going to invest my time in trying to be a good
employee and meet our expectations you can invest at least a fair amount of time in
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evaluating that. But if the form is so cumbersome or so difficult to work with that it
became sort of unbalanced, now I'm spending hours and hours trying to just evaluate
something that shouldn't take that long. Again, easy to use. We were really trying to
come up with something that was a little bit more user friendly. So, what do we do?
Well, again, we looked at -- we hired a consultant to help work with us in the
departments. We helped -- we interviewed every department and tried to get their
feedback on what would this look like to you and we created a format and a form in
which to do that with. We, then, tried that form. We actually went out and collected
feedback. We have focus groups of employees and focus groups of supervisors and
said how does this work for you and the feedback from supervisors initially was great, it
seemed easier, we like that. From the employees it was -- it doesn't go far enough. It's
easy, but we really want to make sure we sort of purge some of the way the past
performances were evaluated. We wanted to make sure that it's -- again, it feels fair. It
feels consistent across the board at all levels. So, we reviewed all that feedback and
we took it back to the directors and in this year we are using it as a pilot. We are testing
this. We have come up with a form that's form fillable. We have come up with a form
that identifies the different areas of emphasis and accountability, it emphasizes the
training needs that you're wanting, the requirements the department might place on you,
the requirements that are city wide, requirements that are department wide,
requirements that are necessary maybe for the individual person in their position and
..what they do. But we want to try.it. We want.to make.sure it fits fir everybody... So, we.
didn't wheel this out and say here is the form, we will see you in five years, hope this
works for you, we said we are going to try this form this year and if it doesn't work tell us
about it, so we can make it better. Our objective is to get something that we all feel is
the best that we can do that fits our needs. So, we did train. We trained everybody on
what the purpose of performance -- performance management is, how to do it for
supervisors and managers, what to look for. How to conduct performance reviews.
Again, one of the things that was lacking was simply on how to have this conversation
with folks. How to meet with employees and explain to them what you're doing and
what you're not doing and why do we need to work on how to do this better or
differently. How do we provide a positive environment so that you can succeed. You
know, we don't really find very often that people don't want to succeed, many times they
just don't know how. They don't know what the expectation is and they don't know how
they are supposed to get there. And so some need a lot of coaching, some don't.
Some need coaching when they don't think they do and some don't. So, it really is --
there really is a lot of coaching that goes on from both HR, as well as in training, to help
supervise and understand, oh, here is how you address that with folks or here is a
better way to address that, instead of just telling people stop doing that, which is easy,
we really need to say we really want you to do it like this and here is why and if you
think there is something different or better, then, tell me what that is, because, you
know, we are always adaptable to change, we want to be flexible to change, but we
think we found a way to do things and we'd like to do it this way, but we also want your
feedback and your input and, again, it may seem intuitive to many, but it isn't intuitive to
everyone and so we want to make sure that we get a consistent tune across the senior
level, corresponding supervisors, and general employees, because we all still -- again,
we are all part of the same team. Questions? Next for HR we have internal alignment
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and that was kind of a precursor to where we are for FY-13. What we did is over the --
over the course of the eight years I have been here we have taken all of our positions,
we have tried to categorize, we have put them into different pay categories, we have
three different systems in the city. We have one for general employees, we have one
for police, and we have one for fire. What we did over the course of the eight years is
we have aligned all the positions and what we did over the -- over last year is we made
sure the position still made sense. We had every department review all of the job
descriptions for all the positions that we have and said is this still what they are doing?
Is this still the job that you have this person doing and does this fit. Do these job
descriptions -- all these requirements, all these responsibilities, are they still -- that's
what your expectations are. So, we can make sure to at least class the jobs correctly,
that the job fits in our matrix appropriately, so that we feel like within market we are
meeting the market requirements of that position. The next step is, then, to look at our
compensation plan and see whether or not we need to make some changes to that and
also bring, again, some consistency and some predictability to a compensation plan for
our general employees. And I told our consultants and our working group -- we have a
sub working group of directors working in that -- I have no preconception going into that.
I have no expectation that it has to look like X. What I want is something that we could
bring back to the Mayor and Council, that we can bring back to our directors and say we
think marketwise this puts the City of Meridian in a very positive place as we move out
of this recession and we become even more competitive for employees in the .future we
want to make sure we are situated where we are paying right, we have classified jobs
correctly, we have put people in the right category, so that they feel like they are getting
compensated appropriately and they feel like they are being treated with value beyond
just their pay, they are treated with value in relation to what they do. And so we want to
make sure that that's what we bring back to you as part of our budget that, obviously,
it's always going to be contingent on the available funding, but the two have some way
to predict -- just like you do with your capital improvement plan, some way to predict
what are we trying to do, what are we trying to get to. So, three years, five years from
now, what is this going to look like. So, that's our objective that we are bringing to you
in FY-13. That's what we are trying to get to before we are done with this part of the
program. One thing I will tell you with your handouts on this -- as I move from the
human resources slide, what I did is we took all the positions in human sources and we
basically gave you a handout that shows all the varieties of different functions and tasks
that they do, whether it's our admin assistant, whether it's our HR manager, our
generalist, or our benefit support coordinator, that's what they do, so that you can see
the various jobs and duties and responsibilities they have in human resources, because,
again, what we do affects everybody and as the Mayor and Council you have a right to
know what do we do in relation to how it impacts the rest of the city. So, that's the
reason for that handout. I just wanted to share that before we moved further. Our next
area of discussion is wellness. This is a program that, again, I think we have really
grown this program over the last five years in partnership with St. Luke's, we have really
grown this to being part of our culture, which was our objective from the outset. We
wanted to create wellness as part of the culture of the City of Meridian. When you work
here we want you -- if somebody says what does wellness mean to you, it means that
our city has invested time and money to providing a program to educate you about your
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general state of your health. We care about how you are. We are looking at a way for
you to be informed about your health choices. We want to give you information and
education about food, menu, diet, health, different -- different aspects of your health, so
that you could be able to make choices for yourself and I think we have been successful
at bringing that to our folks. I think people expect it anymore in our workplace in a good
way. They want to be a part of that. They want to know what's next. So, one of the
things we did this year, as you know we had a conversation with you a few months ago
and said we want to provide a wellness incentive for this year only, in 2012, for our
employees to participate in a health screening portion. So, we had 164 employees
enrolled in FY-12, now we have 206. We had 201 employees take the -- complete the
entire wellness requirement, which is a wellness profile and a blood screen. That was
an increase in -- is Erin here? She's not. She's not. My recollection -- and my memory
is fairly faulty these days -- we had somewhere in the area of about 125 to '30 last year
complete all of it. We have a lot sign up and, then, some don't finish, as you can
imagine. So, here have a significant increase in employees participating. An incentive
-- obviously, with some incentive for folks, but, again, I think part of it is the culture we
have created. So, we have 201 employees have participated in the complete amount --
in addition to that five additional have also signed up. So, we have a lot of participants
in the health screening. Again, 244 that participated and that's the requirement to enter
the wellness program is you have to be in the health screening. So, if you didn't get this
all. done, take it to a hundred, you're.. still.eligi.ble for the wellness program,.which, as you
recall the incentive for that is you complete a certain level of points, which all the points
are related to activities and events and different activities and events and different key
things you can participate in, work out educational plans and such that you can earn an
actual day off as part of that. So, that's a great incentive for most people, they really like
that, we like continuing that, because we think it's still working for folks. Here is some of
the data. So, this is some of the aggregate data and it may be a little alarming to you
that some of the data looks very negative, but let me explain. Okay. So, we actually
appear to have gone down in percentage of employees doing well in the FY-13 so far.
We have raised in hypertension in FY-13 and we have raised in overweight. Part of the
reason for that is we have more participants. So, the more participants -- which is
exactly the intent of what we were looking for, the more people that we can have
participate, the better range of data that we get and with that data we can then begin to
target what's important. You know, we now know we have a fairly significant amount of
employees that are in the overweight category. So, weight control and weight education
about that and how those things relate to your health is obviously important, so we need
to focus our attention as a wellness committee also providing that information to our
employees. Hypertension leads to many things, including heart attacks. So,
hypertension is, obviously, important enough we need to focus some attention on those
types of things. That's what we were looking for. So, although the numbers may be a
little concerning to you that they are either lower in the bad -- in the good categories and
higher in the bad categories, part of it is because we have more participants and the
more participants is better. It at least gives us a better sense of what our general
population is and that's what we were wanting to see. Again, our blood pressure,
though, again, this one's good. This one's a positive and our smokers are down on that,
another positive. So, those are things that, again, us in a committee helps evaluating
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January 8, 2013
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what type of programs that we need to do. How do we attack these numbers so that we
can bring to you a year from now better numbers, better education to folks, better
opportunities for people to learn about their health, which is, again, at the end of the day
what's my objective as the HR director is I want to be able to know what they are doing
and how it affects them. Again, I can't chose for folks when they go home to eat a big
plate of fries and smoke a cigar every night before you go to bed, but I can at least tell
them if you do those things this is how this will affect you, whether it affects your health,
whether it affects your use of health benefits, whether it affects your out-of-pocket
costs, those are choices you're going to have to make, but at least you need to be
educated as to what does that mean. I think most of us can agree the more education
you have the better off you are. The more you know about how this impacts you the
better off you are, because many people -- the reasons they run unto health issues is
they were uninformed, they never got the right information early enough to make a
change in their life before they had a heart attack, before they had some other health
condition of some sort and now they are forced to make those decisions, because they
had a heart attack or they had a bad blood test or they had a bad x-ray at their annual
screening and now all of a sudden they -- they don't have as many choices anymore.
We want to avoid that.. Just a little sum up on our benefits again. We redesigned our
employee benefits program slightly to, again, keep up with the marketplace and to keep
our cost of our healthcare down. The cost of our healthcare for the city for employees
and city is significant and there is no doubt about it. And as --._as healthcare changes
across the next few years we are probably going to be looking at this every single year
as to how to keep the costs contained for the city, as well as the employees. As I try to
explain to employees as they were frustrated sometimes that even aredesign -- even
though it's slight -- sometimes slight is a relative term, right, so slight for me may be
significant to somebody else. Well, what I would tell them is if we didn't make some
adjustments to our healthcare plan there is a point in time where no one could afford it
any longer and the slight adjustment would be a major adjustment and you couldn't
afford it if we did it in one year and neither could we. So, we as the city have to be
mindful of that, we have to be accountable to our citizens, but we also have to be
understanding of our employees and so that's the balance we try to bring to you in our
benefit packet each year. That's covered. That's something I came up with -- you know
I say all the time and I really mean it, you know, as the city attorney it is a privilege. You
know, there are 200 plus cities in the state, but there are probably about a dozen or less
in-house city attorneys. And so it is a great importance to me and you as the Mayor and
the Council of our city recognize that our responsibility as the city attorney and the
deputies that we have is to make sure you're covered on what you need. We are there
to make sure you can do what you need to do legally within the law, make sure our
employees and departments can do whatever is legally within the law. I don't have an
agenda. I don't have an objective as the city attorney that we need to do X, Y or Z
every year for me to feel good about myself. Your agenda is ours. Whatever you need
us to do to help make these things happen that's what we are here for. We want to
make sure we stay within the law, as do you. That's our role. Our role and
responsibility is to look out for you. So, it isn't -- there isn't anything else on my plate as
the city attorney than to make sure what you need to get done we can help you do. And
when you can't we will tell you you can't do that. We serve the City Council and the
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January 8, 2013
Page 17 of 62
Commission. I was trying to find the Elvis picture and I couldn't find Brad Miller's Elvis
picture, but if you could look you can see that's former Council Member Wardle. You
may recall if you were here when he came dressed as a BSU fan. But, again, many of
these things that we will see in these next set of slides are the things that most of you
know because it kind of is what comes under your plate weekly or daily. We, obviously,
provide service to you, to the Mayor, to the Council meetings. We provide review of
every -- everything that goes on that agenda has been reviewed by somebody to make
sure it belongs there. You know, between us and the clerk's office we make sure that
the things that are there have been vetted and reviewed appropriately, so that you can
feel comfortable that they have met all the legal necessities before you even have to
make a decision on this. We cover all the seven boards. Traffic Safety -- we are going
to talk about the traffic commission here as the next item, but we provide legal support
to every one of these boards and commissions, because, again, there are legal
ramifications if you don't. When I got here eight years ago we didn't necessarily provide
legal support to all of these boards and commissions and virtually nothing ever really
happened negatively, but I can't gamble and neither can you that we will always never
run into a problem, so we provide support to all of them in varying degrees. We provide
resolutions for all the appointments. We cover all the -- again, we cover all the
commissions. We make sure we attend the meetings and we manage whatever
litigation types of issues come out of that, whatever litigation issues might exist out there
we help manage that.as part of your legal services. Next up we have got some. things
we are still working on. Commissioner handbook. We do provide training, because we
have on-site legal staff for all of our commissions we do provide periodic training to
those commissions as they get new members to understand what their roles and
responsibilities are, what they can do and what they can't do, how their functions work,
how the public meeting requirements are met. We are still working on commercial
recycling. That's a subcommittee of the Solid Waste Advisory Commission. That
should be coming to you soon. Again, there is update of city ordinances, as well as the
impact fee, methodology, make sure we are current with the state law and state
requirements for that. The Mayor's office we have worked on policies in regards to
social media, as well as the city event calendar, trying to make sure that the policies are
consistent, because, again, those are the areas that could be the land mines out there
in the public. You know, we don't have a very litigious community, which is nice, but
there is lots of case law out there about cities or governmental entities that are very
restrictive on how they do things and some of it doesn't comport with what the law is
that's out there for access or for free speech and so we want to make sure that they are
always in compliance with that, so we work on that. We obviously support in providing
information both to the Mayor's Office or AIC on legislation that's coming and what
impact, if any, they may have on the city. We get lots of citizen concerns about varieties
of things, we provide information back to that. Again, we do lots of Council meeting
preparation. As all of you know, we work very hard to make this look very easy and I
have had the comment come to me and I'm always flattered by that when they say,
wow, you seem to know everything sitting over there in that seat and I don't. Sorry to lift
the veil, but I don't know everything when I sit over there, but we spend a lot of time
preparing, so that we, hopefully, will be able to address 99 percent of the questions or
concerns you might have at either a Council meeting or a commission meeting, so that
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January 8, 2013
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way the person sitting there, whether it's me or Mr. Baird or Ms. Cane or Ms. Pogue,
that we can answer those questions pretty seamlessly. You know, it wouldn't be helpful
to you if every time you asked a question of legal counsel they said interesting question,
get back to you next week. It doesn't help you do your job very well. That's not our --
that's not what we want to do. We want to be able to answer those. Obviously there
are occasions where we go, you know what, I really can't answer that one today, but we
spend a lot of time just to make sure we can. So, just want to make a little plug for the
preparation time. Again, we also provide support to our new communications manager
-- again, there is a lot of land mines out there as the world of social media evolves we
are going to probably see more and more of it. All the time we are seeing courts trying
to wrestle with the way we used to do things and the way we do things today and we
are trying to stay in front of that to assist in our communications to make sure that we
again, are on the forefront of the issues and not always extending ourselves, but really
being in the front end of it. Information services. Again, we provide support to the
permits and licenses, we review all of those, make sure they fit with city code. We
provide staff training on public records. Public records, as you can see, did 180
requests in 2012. That doesn't seem like very much. I mean you have around 200
average days in a year of work days, that's less than one a day. That doesn't seem
very lengthy. I think Ms. Holman can attest it is incredibly complicated. The Mayor and
I we were talking about a public records case recently and I said I think our legislators
..think that public records .is walking up to ,a filing cabinet, opening a drawer and pulling.
out a piece of paper, photocopying it and handing it to somebody over the counter.
That's doesn't happen anymore. It might happen in the history center. That's probably
the only place that you would keep everything in a drawer, but most things aren't kept in
drawers anymore. They are all electronic. They are kept in a variety of different
formats. They are incredibly comprehensive. Any and all -- when you ask for
something in a public records context for any and all, depending on what it is, it could be
thousands of pages. It could be thousands of documents or thousands of pieces of
information. Many times it takes us hours to discern what you want, because if we have
to do a word search to determine that, don't word search for things that are very very
simple, right? I mean we all know that. You can't go to Google and put in Meridian and
hope to only get 10,000 hits. So, the reality is it's a very complicated role of
disseminating information. And although we certainly are of the opinion of what the
state law requires, with all the opinions available, we just want to make sure we get you
the right information and if we don't have to charge you for it's great, but it still takes a
lot of time. And so doing that, working with the clerk's office to make sure -- and
working with IT to gather it is a lot of work and a lot of time and we try to be, again, in
the forefront of that. Having to deal with the negative impact of not providing public
information is not worth it. It's not worth it to us, it's not worth it to you. We want to
make sure it's there, but, again, we want to make sure we are getting the right
information to the right people. Obviously, there is other things that go on, special
events, other agencies agreements that we deal with. Again, we are working on
records retention. That's the next phase. TUPs, we are looking at tiered events,
because we find that sometimes, again, one size doesn't fit all in these TUPs, you had
that come in front of you a few times where people think, oh, my gosh, I have to pay this
much money for this kind of event. Well, maybe there is levels of those that would
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January 8, 2013
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make sense, so we are looking at that. Again, we are also trying to streamline or
coordinate the process, because police, fire and everybody else are asked for records
or information separately for different things. Some of it is very very confidential, like in
fire a lot of the information they have has HIPAA requirements and privacy
requirements. A lot of things in police, maybe ongoing investigations or may have
privacy issues that add to it, some don't. So, we have to really -- you have to walk
through that mine field very cautiously to make sure, again, we are meeting the law's
requirements, providing to them what they need and we want to make sure we have
streamlined those together. It has been a great partnership with the clerk's office in
making this work. We are incredibly more efficient and much more thorough than we
were two or three or four years ago and we are continuing to work through that. On the
Finance Department, again, lots of bankruptcies. I think we have talked about this
before. Ms. Pogue from my staff she's our primary bankruptcy attorney. Forty-five
cases managed. That doesn't sound like a lot. Bankruptcy is a whole other world of
law. The courts and elsewhere, you're aware we have courts in Delaware to deal with
bankruptcies that aren't here. We have to hire counsel to deal with that. We have a lot
of cases that the court -- we are sort of tangential sometimes. Most people haven't filed
bankruptcy because they owe us 150 dollars for a water bill. Usually they owe lots to
other people. So, we are way down on the pecking order. So, sometimes it really is
just reviewing all these documents, making sure that we file the right documents to
.make sure the city is going to get paid at the appropriate time and, then,, periodically
verifying has this been -- is this in discharge. Is this completed yet? Have we been
paid? There is a lot of review that goes on at our level that never comes up to any of
you, but are things that need to be done to again make sure our taxpayers are getting
compensated for the services that have been provided. Board of Adjustments. I know
every time I bring up Board of Adjustment I apologize to Tom Sauer, because I
promised him that we wouldn't meet very much and we do. We didn't have as many in
the end of 2012, we have had a lot of those, but it's been a really good process. It's an
avenue for folks who have a disagreement on their billing with the city to have a board
to come to address it and we have addressed a lot of concerns both in favor of the city,
but sometimes in favor of the claimant, you know, sometimes people have a very
legitimate reason of why there was some misunderstanding and we try to work through
that or educating folks. So, that's been a very good process. We are working at
updating our city code to reflect current practice. That's what that next step means.
Police and code enforcement. That's a major area of emphasis for us. We deal with a
lot of different things both in police as well as code enforcement. As you can see on the
slide I mean we are talking things from vehicle storage to towing. Nuisance issues.
Construction sites. Fireworks. Signs. Animal control. I mean there is a lot of different
things in the police world or code enforcement that we have to address that we work
very hard again to partner with our police department make sure we are meeting all of
their needs. We love the cougar-dog agreement. That's our -- that's one of our
favorites. I think that's the first agreement we ever had called that. As you may or may
not know -- most of you probably do -- when we had those recent cougar sightings that
agreement was very helpful to have in place, because our officer with his dog was
asked to assist Fish and Game to help locate those mountain lions or cougars that we
were finding on the greenbelt. So, we were engaged and actively involved with. So,
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having an agreement in place to make it clear who is responsible for what, who is liable
for what, those are the types of things that that agreement addressed. Public safety
academy waiver, again, we didn't realize in the past when we had public safety
academies we didn't have anybody sign a waiver if they got injured, if they got injured in
some fashion that it was their they own responsibility to have their own insurance that
wasn't the city's insurance and so we helped craft that and, then, of course, we provide
support for all levels of the CUDC, nuisances, animal control -- again, we attend
meetings of -- you know, as all of you know, because you probably all get calls about
code enforcement -- it does tend to be a hot button for our citizens that we really try to
sit down with the citizen -- with our staff, with our legal staff, as well as code
enforcement to explain to them here is what you need to do and we try very hard,
before you get to the citation, that we have worked with them very extensively on here is
what you need to do. So, as you have heard me say before, if somebody calls you and
says I had no idea that I had leaves that were too high and somebody showed up at my
house with a ticket, that's probably not accurate. They have probably had more than
one person and more than one notice that they needed to do something and the ticket is
the last thing, not the first thing. And that's something we and the police department
have worked very extensively on to make sure people understood that. So, we were
very -- we were concerned that people understood what they were doing and what the
requirements were before they got sent to court. So, that's what's -- that's something
we .have worked -- we have spent with the police. department. as a partner on, Again,_
we have upcoming things, parking code, false alarms, are still issues that we have.
Again, we are looking at a citywide process to make sure it's uniform for code
enforcement. We deal with lots of nuisances and such and so there are things that,
again, you will be seeing over the next year out of legal in regards to code enforcement
issues. Fire department. Again, we are dealing with public records. Medical director
standards. Property release. That's one that we just -- you should be seeing here
soon. One of the things that happens sometimes we are at a fire scene -- at some point
we want to turn that property back over to the owner and say we are going to leave
now, so if something else happens you need to call us, but we are not going to monitor
your property any longer. We want to make sure they are aware of that. So, it isn't
necessarily that they are indemnifying the city for anything, but we want to at least make
sure there is some clear lines from when we are no longer primarily responsible for your
property and now you are, so that if somebody breaks in or somebody comes on your
property when we are not there, we are not responsible for everything that goes on on
that property at a certain point, we want to make sure that's clear. Again, there is some
things that you will be seeing on those, there is open burning, false alarms, fee
schedule, those types of events, you will be seeing that out of legal over the next year
as well. Parks and rec. Again, we had a discussion earlier in 2012 about the instructor
agreements, making sure those are clear as to what our relationship is with our
instructors. Again, with our special events, of course, as we opened Kleiner Park we
had larger scale events, want to make sure that the city was fairly compensated for the
time and effort of staff to manage those events for them to deal with trash, deal with
pickup, to deal with security and those kinds of things. We have community gardens we
have prepared agreements for, as well as a variety of other things with regards to
pathways, farm leases and the like. Again, I think more than anything it's just to
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{ highlight these, things that you have probably seen pieces of and when you see it
altogether you realize there is a lot of different pieces and moving parts to legal that you
may or may not have thought of recently. Again, the sponsorships, the policy in regards
to that, the arborists, we deal with hazardous trees around the city. We have had
issues where we have removed trees and we need to get compensated for that. How
that gets done effectively -- again, joint use agreement for the gym facilities, we have
had some lengthy discussions about that. And, of course, you will see some -- some
policies and the like that will come back to you. Public Works same thing. We review
all of their agreements, all of their easements, all their reimbursements, code updates if
any that are necessary and, then, of course, there is environmental concerns that are
coming and we seem to be seeing a lot more of those that our Solid Waste Advisory
Commission and environmental issues in regards to the landfill, as well as recycling in
our community and we have -- we have our -- a staff person primarily focused on doing
those things with the department. Community development. Again, the UDC -- as you
know, especially as we grow and move out of this recession we have been in, we are
seeing more development, we are seeing more development agreements, we are going
to see more annexations coming forward or we are going to start seeing all those time
extensions you have been granting over the last few years come to fruition, so now they
are going to start actually developing those things and those are the things that we get
involved with, too, whether it's street lighting, current standards, whether it's
streetscapes that haven't gotten done, CL that are going to .get done, building permits
that are going to get issued, how do we provide support to those things, as well as at
the Planning and Zoning Commission level. Again, all those things that are involved
have a legal involvement with them. The city core streetscape ordinance that was,
again, the downtown streetscapes. We talked about license agreements for downtown
sidewalks with ACRD. We did in 2012 and, of course, sign code updates are fairly
constant. And, again, some of these are things that you're aware of that are somewhat
routine, dealing with our inspectors and code compliance sections and such. My last
area is protecting our city in risk management. We have been very vigilant on our side
in addressing risk management claims, both the worker's comp ones, as well as tort
claims against the city. You will notice in FY-12 they went down significantly, almost by
half. That's a lot of different things. I mean one of it's education in our departments and
also it's a lot of very pro-active work. Police is probably the greatest area of risk that we
see out there, most for driving, as well as normal police work kinds of issues. Our
police department has been very vigilant on the forefront of both training and
information on educating their -- their department on good practices, better practices,
and those are things that help keep those claims down. You know, as those -- as those
claims get managed, as we managed those, with -- in partnership with ICRMP, that
helps keep our costs down to the city. So, we have been very fortunate in having a
good relationship with ICRMP and a good relationship with our departments that have
risk factors in making sure that we are addressing those on the front end, again. We
want to be very proactive, not reactive, in the risk management area. You know,
wanted to keep this under a Tom Barry length, but -- and -- but I wanted to make sure
that --
De Weerd: We have a new standard.
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Nary: Thank you.
De Weerd: Now it will be the Bill Nary standard.
Nary: Thank you. But I wanted you all to know -- I mean, like I said, I don't think I -- I
don't think I have shared anything with you that all of you don't know. You see a lot of
what we do in pieces and parts every week. So, I know you're well aware of it. I know
on the human resources side, as you know, that most of those things -- if it trickles up to
your level, then, you know, all those other things underneath it have already been done.
But, again, I wanted to emphasize to you what we do every day to make sure that the
city is taken care of, that the needs of our employees, as well as the needs of our Mayor
and Council, the needs of our senior management, the needs of our directors -- but,
again, the needs of our employees and our citizens means a great deal to me. I have
lived here in Meridian for 27 years. This is my town, too. This matters to me. Whether
I worked here or not -- and even when I didn't work for the City of Meridian, this town
matters to me. And it matters to my staff. You know, the attorneys and the HR
professionals on our staff, they care what happens in our community and that's
something that is important to us and is not necessarily common everywhere, but it
certainly is part of engrained in our DNA of who we are and that's something that we
wanted you to. really to hear about, we. are.very proud of the work that vve have, done
and we are proud to work for the city and, again, I am very proud to work with the
professionals that I get to work with every day. The people in my department are
beyond compare with anybody else I have ever worked with. So, it is a privilege to work
here and to bring you our report of the year and the year to come and I'd stand for any
questions.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Nary -- or I mean --
Bird: No, I'm not Mr. Nary.
De Weerd: I'm sorry. Mr. Bird.
Bird: I got a question for Mr. Nary. And now I got a statement to start with. And I do
agree with you on all your employees there. Great people and do a great job. And one
thing you didn't point out, Bill, is everything that comes before us, contracts or anything,
for us to approve and the Mayor to sign you have approved. Every contract that comes
through this city your department has approved.
Nary: Yes.
Bird: Am I not right there? I have one question. And you can answer, maybe you can't.
Employee turnover rate, what percent do we have excluding retirement? Is Crystal
here?
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January 8, 2013
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Nary: We just went through this exercise.
De Weerd: But you can't answer it from there.
Nary: The question was what's our turnover rate. Not -- excluding retirement. Although
we don't have a lot of retirements, but we had a few more this last year than we have
had in the past.
Bird: We have a couple retirements lately.
Ritchie: Yeah. We have had a few.
Nary: This is Crystal Ritchie, our HR manager.
Ritchie: You know, I don't have the exact number. We can get you that information.
We have just started pulling that reporting since we have gone into the new physical
year. The last information that we sent out was between three and five and a half
percent.
Bird: _ That's what I was going to say, I think.. it's ,under six percent, isn't it?. Yeah.
Ritchie: Yes.
Bird: Which is a very good record. Tells us we must be doing something right. Thank
you, guys, very much for your job. Appreciate it.
Ritchie: You're welcome.
De Weerd: You know, I would like to thank you, Bill, and your staff. I truly believe that
you exemplify the CARE values and that you look out not only for what's best for the
employees, but you do look out at the budget ramifications as well. I guess just a note
to the City Council in the salary efforts that are being done, is what we want is
predictability for the budget and along-term budget plan that will be brought back to
you. So, Finance and HR and our employees have a better idea of where we are going
and -- and what -- what they can anticipate. The efforts on the wellness committee, we
don't know what the national healthcare plan -- the impact is going to be on our budget
and so they are trying to get ahead of things and put some things in place to minimize
what that budget impact is going to be, both to the city and to our employees' pocket
books. So, we appreciate the efforts you have on that side and certainly always
appreciate the efforts on our legal team to keep us out of hot water and minimize the
cost on that end, too. So, Council, if there is no further questions?
Hoaglun: Just a quick comment.
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
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Hoaglun: We do appreciate the work you do and when you see it in black and white it
really is amazing how much you get through in a day. Thank you.
Nary: Thank you.
De Weerd: Yeah. Thank you.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor? Thank you. And excellent to see all the things that have
been going on and I know as a councilman I have felt the support of everybody and you
do good work and particularly in risk management. Managing us as a risk is a high level
job, so thank you.
De Weerd: And we are just giving you a greater risk as he will be your council liaison,
so --
Zaremba: I'm looking forward to that.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Nary: Thank, you..
C. Transportation Task Force and Traffic Safety Commission
Joint Report: ®iscussion on the Potential Establishment of the
City Transportation Commission
De Weerd: Okay. Our next agenda item is under our Transportation Task Force and
Traffic Safety Commission. Caleb has a report on possible consolidation.
Hood: I do. Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. I am here as a
representative of a team of about four that's been meeting over the past four, five, six
months, something -- something on that order. This issue actually came to my attention
from one of our Transportation Task Force members Steve Sedlacek, who also serves
on the chamber's transportation committee and was hearing a lot of the same things two
and three times and so he -- he asked if there was some way maybe we could
streamline some of our processes and merge some of the transportation related
working groups into one -- one group. So, again, over the past few months we have
been working on putting something together on what that might look like. So, today we
have two groups at the city that meet on a regular basis, the Transportation Task Force
and the Traffic Safety Commission. The TTF, the Transportation Task Force, they do --
their primary -- primary responsibility is bringing together annually a list of priority
projects for roadways, intersections, and sidewalk type projects, bring that to the
Council to endorse and, then, we send that over to COMPASS and ACHD and VRT and
-- and that gets through the programing processes and budget processes over at the
transportation agencies. We also deal somewhat with legislation and over the past year
or so we have been working on our transit plan for the city. There are 16 members in
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that group. A lot of them and a lot of the regular attenders are -- are city employees or
other transportation agency representatives. But we do have some residents that also
attend and they are -- in the bylaws they are -- they represent all parts of the city, so we
have central Meridian residents, north and south Meridian residents. And we do also
have some -- I put a couple -- few on the slide, just because we do have I think four or
five that are actually on the group, but we only get maybe two per meeting that are
actual business representatives that attend. So, we do have monthly meetings on our
schedule, but we are -- we cancel right about every other one, just because there is not
enough work throughout the year for these folks to do in that capacity. Again, the
priority stuff is usually the summer and takes about three months and that's when we hit
it pretty hard. But throughout the rest of the year it's kind of hit and miss with agenda
items. The Traffic Safety Commission also meets annually. Their focus -- or, excuse
me, monthly. But their focus is more on safety, as it is in the name of that group. They
deal a lot with stop sign requests or conflicts, issues, speed limits, traffic calming, safe
routes to schools and gaps in the pedestrian or bicycle network. And a lot of their
issues are brought to them by members of the public. So, homeowners associations or
somebody that notices that, you know, that there is an issue there with driving or
walking or biking and, then, we get it on the agenda there. I do not serve on the Traffic
Safety Commission, but I do regularly attend those just for support, because I generally
have my hand in some realm of what they are talking about. I am a member of the
..Transportation Task.Force hpwever. , So, the.Traffic Safety Commission is. made up of.
nine members. It is a mix of citizens and agency staff and, again, they meet monthly.
They do meet in here. It is a little more formal. They are a true commission of the city
and they do have bylaws. They are established in Title 2 of city code whereas the task
force is appointed by the Mayor. It really came about as a request from the highway
district, again, for that -- that compilation of a priority list annually so that ACHD primarily
would know what our highest priority projects were. So, some of the issues and kind of
why we are -- want to explore this with you a little bit more today and really propose
something to you today is there is some duplication of efforts. We do spend -- a lot of
our overlap has to do with pedestrian facilities and bike ways. Not a whole lot of
overlap. I try to make sure there isn't too much overlap. We aren't talking about the
same things over each other, but there are some duplication there. There isn't a clear
procedure or process for resolving these. As everyone knows we don't have any
roadway authority, so a lot of these things we can't change anyways, it's something that
we can ask ACHD to do to correct something or ask you is it okay if we change a speed
limit or those types of things, but we have no authority. So, we'd like to kind of put
together a process for what could be tackled at the staff level, when can we just engage
with ACHD at a staff level and maybe the stop signs or when does it need to be -- come
all the way to Council for your blessing to -- to engage the ITD board or whatever the
case may be. This -- the next issue that I have listed there is really about me, although
it's not a huge issue. I do spend quite a bit of time attending these meetings and do
hear things three, four, five times, which it starts to finally sink in when I hear it for about
the third or fourth time. But some of that can be a good thing, but there is -- but there is
some -- some duplication again of staff efforts as well. I'm not the only one. There are
others at the city that attend multiple meetings regarding transportation and the way we
are set up we do have a limited availability for residents to become involved and we
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January 8, 2013
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have heard more people wanting in transportation-related issues. So, that's sort of what
we -- and I will get to the -- to the structure of what we are talking about maybe with this
new group in a second. Economic development. We -- there isn't currently a primary
focus of either one of these groups, so that's something that we have heard should be
considered more frequently in some of these decisions and so that's something we will
look at incorporating into a new transportation commission. And, then, the transparency
aspect, first of all, that the traffic -- the Transportation Task Force usually meets in
conference room A, which is open to the general public, but we don't record the
meetings, it's not held in here, we don't do the official noticing through the city clerk, it is
just a working group of folks and we get things done. I mean that's one of the things I
will talk about in just a minute, but it is very -- it's very open to folks to come in and
share their thoughts, but it's comfortable, we are not here in this room and it's not being
recorded, but -- but this would provide an opportunity for more transparency in
government and the work we do and, then, consistency across the different
transportation groups and so the public could know if I have an issue, regardless of
whether it's a safety issue or if it's a planning or transportation issue, I can go to one
group. I don't need to worry about who -- who to ask this, it's going to go to one
commission or one staff person. So, that's some of the issues today that we -- it's
totally broken, it's just there are some issues and we think we can make it better. So,
here is a list of the tasks that this new commission would primarily be doing. It's not an
exhaustive list.. Iran out of room. .But.it does include I. think most of the duties. and,
then, in parenthesis is who is doing that now is something the task force is doing, it is
something that staff primarily does. So, you can kind of see -- I think I have touched on
most of these things -- ACRD budget and five year work plan, I didn't include for that
third bullet is -- is COMPASS's long range transportation plan is that acronym there.
So, there would be some involvement with that. The fourth bullet really -- we don't have
either one of them doing right now and we probably need to. Our Comp Plan has a lot
of transportation elements, but we don't touch it on a regular basis, we have either one
of these groups, so that is something where I'd like to grow this group and we can have
regular discussions on our Comp Plan in keeping it current and would engage this
commission in doing so. So, I said I wasn't going to read them all, so I will probably just
stop there and -- maybe the last one, submit an annual report to Council, so you at least
know what this group is doing and the Traffic Safety Commission does that, but the task
force doesn't officially do that. Certainly they come to you on a regular basis, but I don't
have an annual report I submit. Any questions on any of those tasks at this point?
Bird: I have none:
De Weerd: Any questions?
Nary: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Nary.
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I'm here on -- partly on behalf of the
Traffic Safety Commission as well and Ryan Lancaster, our vice-chair, is in the
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audience. We did bring it up with them and it was kind of a mixed review and I think
some needed some time to digest it. I think there were some folks -- and Ryan was one
of them -- that really understood kind of what we were trying to get to. I mean sort of a
one place for these types of issues makes some sense. The ability to deal with both the
planning, as well as the -- the neighborhood concerns makes sense to folks. The only --
the only real trepidation, which is very minor -- and I think more of it was just having to
process -- is one of the concerns expressed was they just didn't want the little guy to get
lost. I mean it is a commission -- right now the Traffic Safety Commission, one of its
charges is to address neighborhood concerns and we don't really have another place in
the city that really you can come and talk to people and say I really think we need a
crosswalk or a stop sign or an HOC signal in my neighborhood or near my
neighborhood for the kids to get to school or for people to get to the park or whatever it
is and that was, really, the only concern was that you don't want to lose that and what I
expressed to the group was I don't think it's the desire of the city to lose that at all. I
think that's still a part of what we are talking about, it's just -- you know, it seems to
make sense to have a group that addresses both the long-term needs, planning, where
the overpass is going to go, when those things are going to happen, what the Comp
Plan needs are, but also it is important to have a place that people can come and say,
you know, there is a need for speed calming in my neighborhood and this seems to
become a cut through for this, that, or whatever and someone needs to help us
understand what can we do .about it.. Some, things .are ..,really staff .concerns and
occasionally the commission says there is a process at ACHD and here is how it works
and here is how you can address it and we support it and sometimes it really is the
commission asking ACHD can we do this and sometimes it's the commission bringing it
to you saying can the City Council support requesting that. The park -- the parking
around Settlers Park is a good example of that. So, I think -- I don't think there was
really any hesitation on the part of the Traffic Safety Commission. There was some
time they wanted to sort of digest the idea. But I think once -- once it was stated that it
was not the intent to take away that opportunity for the neighborhood concern, but
simply to add the long-term needs of the city, along with the neighborhood concerns,
that I don't really think there is a concern about moving this direction.
De Weerd: Well -- and I don't know if Ryan has any comments, but -- and I will ask if
you would like to weigh in. But that was certainly originally one of my concerns about
merging the two is losing that -- that accessibility from a citizen's perspective to weigh in
on safety issues and those kind of things and I think, Ryan, that was something that you
had expressed. But I do think there is a nexus between the safety issues of today and
the long-term planning and where those two with one citizen group hearing them, can
kind of better -- I guess vet those issues and bring them together into one
comprehensive plan. And I would admit on the record, Caleb, that -- that I was the one
dragging my feet, but I think that you -- you all have talked about it and worked through
some of those issues. Ryan, do you have some input?
Lancaster: Yeah. Madam Mayor, thank you for the opportunity to share a couple of my
thoughts as well. But I think another few concerns that were brought up in our
commission that maybe haven't been mentioned yet or maybe I just didn't catch them,
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January 8, 2013
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but there was some concern about, you know, right now there is essentially a planning
group, the task force, and there is an operations or sort of, you know, get out down into
the weeds group with the Traffic Safety Commission and so you're kind of hitting on two
different aspects of transportation, if you will. That's not necessarily my concern, but I
just want to make sure that all the voices of the commissions were represented as well.
Personally I'm -- I'm in favor of a joint commission. I think -- I guess my overriding
thought on this is, you know, just due to the circumstances, you know, Meridian is not
necessarily -- well, not owning or operating the roads that are in our city, it does seem
perhaps a little extreme to have two commissions or task force for something that we,
you know, can advise or can make requests on, but don't have authority to act on. So,
think that's my overriding thought is, you know, why do we have two groups for -- you
know, for something that we just advise on. Other thoughts that I have is -- and
perhaps this is a little bit selfish on my part, but being a -- you know, in the
transportation profession, you know, I certainly feel that I personally can contribute to
both the planning and the operation side fairly well and so I'd like to be involved with
both aspects of that. You know, I don't know how well, you know, all of the -- the
current commissioners on the traffic safety commission are, you know, future members
of this proposed commission, you know, would be able to, you know, speak fluently
about both planning and operations or either, but, you know, I guess that's a
consideration. But, you know, overall I'm in favor of forming one transportation
commission.
De Weerd: Thank you, Ryan. And I will comment. I certainly know that part of the
Planning and Zoning Commission -- you don't have to be an expert. You have to be
one that walks on the sidewalks, drives on the road, or is concerned about your kids'
safety. And I don't think you have to know to the level of knowledge that you have, you
just have to be a concerned citizen that cares about how we grow and the safety
aspects of our community and you learn. I still recall my first Planning and Zoning
Commission meeting and I thought the blueprints that showed these -- these diagrams
were something I needed to be concerned of and they were just moving docks drawn
into the plan. So, I didn't know what they were. I eventually did. But I think there might
be a learning curve for some and others can -- can get on board a lot earlier, but having
a diversity of perspective is a good thing and it lends to different considerations that if --
if you don't have people from all walks you won't have. So, Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, while Ryan is up here -- this is a question I was going to ask
at the end of the presentation, so I'd like his perspective on it while he's here and that's
the Transportation Task Force is -- and Caleb gets a chance to think about how he will
respond when the time comes, but the Transportation Task Force has 16 members,
which is quite large, but for task force, you know, that's -- it's workable. The safety
committee -- commission has nine members, which is a good size, but still manageable
for a commission and whatnot. What -- what's the number? I mean for something -- if
we combine -- we come up with a safety commission -- it's -- you got to have something
workable, manageable, but what's your thoughts on -- what do you think is the sweet
spot here?
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Lancaster: Well, I'm not sure I have an opinion on it per se, but I know in our
commissioner meetings Mr. Nary and Caleb both mentioned that they -- or they were --
well, Caleb is probably going to talk about this later, but I think the idea was mentioned
a seven person commission. Seven seemed like a good number to get, you know, a
frequent quorum, so -- and have a working group that way. So, I think the idea was to
have some, you know, commissioners and, then, other ex-officio members. So, Caleb's
probably better to talk about that than me, but --
Hoaglun: And he did have a slide for it.
Lancaster: Yeah.
Hoaglun: He was well prepared, so --
Lancaster: But I think that seems reasonable. You know, anywhere in that size of
group is fine with me. You know, with our current commission of nine members, with
roughly half citizens and half, you know, officials we -- I think in the year and a half that I
have been on the commission we have had all nine members once, so --
Hoaglun: Have you had any quorum problems though?
Lancaster: We have on occasion.
Hoaglun: From time to time?
Lancaster: Yeah. We have had to cancel some meetings because of lack of a quorum.
Yeah.
Hoaglun: Okay. Great. That's -- I was just kind of curious about your thoughts on that.
Lancaster: Yeah.
Hoaglun: Because I see Caleb was well prepared, but just did want to get your input on
that.
Lancaster: Well, thank you.
Hoaglun: Any other questions from Council members for Ryan while he's up here?
Bird: Mr. President? I like your layout here of nine members. I think you do need nine
members and we do need them to be diversed. So, I think the layout I got here I think
looks good to me and I think we need to get it -- get them appointed. It's no different
than our parks and recreation, our MDC or anything else. Make sure they want to be on
it and that they do have the time to commit to it, so we are not worrying about getting
quorums here so we can have our meetings and set it on a monthly basis -- or timely
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basis and go for it. I think it looks great and I think it's a great idea. There is no reason
to have two task forces, but I think you need one like this instead of one like that TTF.
Hoaglun: Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Zaremba, any thoughts?
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Hoaglun: Yes.
Zaremba: This isn't really a question for anybody, but I was going to offer a similar
perspective from the TTF side. I have been a member of that group for about 12 years
and somewhere around eight to ten years ago we originally were only meeting once a
year and that was to go over ACHD's five year work plan and see if the city had any
comments they wanted to add to it and it was actually this Mayor that bumped it up to
meeting more frequently and gave us a few more assignments and it's been enjoyable
to have kind of a relaxed atmosphere and as Caleb has pointed out there are quite a
few members -- not all of them show up every time, but they are very diverse
backgrounds and make a big contribution. It does seem logical to me, as our city
grows, to take this next step of combining the two groups and having some official
responsibilities for the group -- the resulting group and to operate it in a more formal
recordkeeping way than .the .Transportation Task .Force has.. So, that. makes sense to.
me. Caleb also has mentioned that the city doesn't actually have any authority over the
transportation agency. Either the service providers, like Valley Regional Transit or the
infrastructure providers, like ACHD and COMPASS, but it does make sense to me to
have a place where citizens can focus it -- and the majority of our citizens don't
understand that distinction and they all think the city's in charge of those things anyhow.
So, it makes sense to me not to respond to them -- oh, go talk to VRT or, oh, go talk to
ACRD, but to actually have a forum and the city is very interested in how these other
agencies work, we have very good working relations with them, and I can see it being of
value to them to have our own forum where our citizens can come and raise an issue
and this commission will sort of vet that out and actually have a plan that can go to
ACHD or VRT if we have comments -- or COMPASS if we have comments that we
need to make. So, I am -- while I was very happy with how TTF was going, I am very
much in favor of making this new combined effort and I think the services that both of
the groups have been performing will combine well and we will have a purpose and can
help our partner agencies with the issues that our citizens raise. So, I'm favor of it.
De Weerd: Thank you, Councilman Zaremba. I appreciate your perspective, because
you have been involved. Any other comments? Thank you, Ryan, for being here.
Appreciate it.
Hood: If I may, Madam Mayor, I just have a couple of things and it sounds like there is
general support, so I'm not going to belabor this too terribly much, but I do -- and
Councilman Zaremba has been a faithful member of the TTF, but I discussed this
potential twice and a little bit to Ryan's -- just to point it out, we did talk about seven,
nine members -- what is the right number and it's still a question, quite frankly, but
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where we kind of land on the recommendation is nine with the breakup that you see
there on the screen. But that is something that we do have 16 members on one and
nine on the other, we thought with six ex-officio it bumps you up a little bit more and
you're somewhere in between. So, the ex-officio members, then, give you a diverse
stakeholder group that can -- that can participate anyways with this group. Now,
obviously, they wouldn't be voting members, but still get a lot of the same folks or
potentially some of the same folks represented on this commission. But the first go
around with the task force that we had this discussion -- I think most people were pretty
content with the way that group works. This most recent discussion we had they said it
makes sense, I mean kind of what Councilman Zaremba said. But there were some
more cons than pros initially from the task force, but I think they have come around a
little bit in that. And just a couple of other things that came up in the discussion you just
had. We will certainly cross-train these folks up. Folks that are used to doing the
operational side we will tell them about the planning side and how that works. We don't
expect them to read a blueprint per se. We will explain to them here is -- here is your
scale, here is how you measure things, here is how it works and vice-versa for folks on
the task force that may apply to be on this commission, you know, the safety stuff, like
you said, Madam Mayor, if you walk and you drive you kind of get that, we don't need to
explain and we have engineers that are trained and can tell you some of the things they
are looking for, but -- but we will bring folks along and are hoping and encouraging
members of both of these groups to. apply.. We think we have some great folks at the
table already, so we don't chance them away, we are looking for about an hour and a
half hour meetings. We aren't looking for a day long deal, but once a month an hour
and a half, maybe two hours, it's the summer when we are doing priority it may take a
little bit longer, but we want people that are engaged. That's really the only true
requirement is commit to coming and being a part of this group and we want your
insight and your interest in this. So, with that I think that's it that I had and it sounds like
you have some general direction, but -- I don't know if there is anything unless you want
to add. We will work with legal. In fact, we already are on a draft to making this an
official commission like others, so --
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor -- and this might be a question for Mr. Nary. I'm trying to recall
what other commissions with a youth member, I think of specific of Arts Commission,
they participate, they are in it -- but I'm trying to remember if they were -- we established
the Arts Commission and, then, there was a youth person to it. This looks like it's -- you
have got four residents, but it's actually going to be three -- three residents, plus a youth
resident and that would be a voting member and part of the quorum and the whole bit?
Is that how it's --
De Weerd: They are on all of our commissions. They are voting members.
Hoaglun: They are.
De Weerd: Part of the quorum.
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Hoaglun: And from time to time I know that as long as we meet the quorum some youth
are fantastic and others they run into scheduling conflicts. So, it's just a matter of
finding the right person for it and -- and --
De Weerd: And right now we have a reliable youth on the Traffic Safety Commission I
believe.
Nary: We do.
De Weerd: I should look at Ryan when I say that, but -- he's -- he's been -- he was here
last year, had expressed interest in continuing on and so we have been fortunate in that
regard.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I would suggest that Caleb get with Bill and one of his -- or one of his attorneys
and get this thing drawn up and let's get going on it. Get it done.
Caleb: Okay.
D. Community Development: Ada County Title 8 and 9
Amendments for Meridian Area of City Impact, lJnincorporated
Ada County
De Weerd: Very good. Thank you. Our next item is our Public Works Department.
Oh, I'm sorry. You had another item?
Hood: I believe that's already in their storage.
Bird: Community development.
De Weerd: Oh. Sorry. I was expediting it.
Hood: And I will try to be brief, Madam Mayor. This is something -- another -- a topic
that I have been involved with over the last few months. I am working from a memo that
hopefully you have had a chance to review in the packet for today. Just a quick
refresher, but I will be working largely from that memo. In October of this year we
submitted -- I submitted I letter to Ada County Development Services requesting an
amendment to Ada County Code Title 9. The intent of that letter was to request
Ada County recognize our most current versions of the Comprehensive Plan and the
future land use map. Both the text and the future land use map were amended by
Council on October 16th, so we followed that up and just said, hey, we have got new
documents, can you guys recognize these and use these in our area of impact. A lot of
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that had to do with south Meridian. And that process we went through on the map and
we made some pretty substantial changes there. We also cleaned up a lot of the text.
So, we initiated then and that and, then, this is the first one we have done since 2008
where we took in the Aldape property and all the way to the river with some of that back
in 2008, went through that -- that negotiation process with Ada County. So, it has been
four years, roughly, since we renegotiated our -- our Title 9 agreement with the county.
So, in doing so they are more than happy to process our request to use our current text
and map. As part of that, though, what we have -- began exploring with them is using
some -- some of the language currently in Title 9 and amending that and moving it into
Title 8, which is their zoning ordinance. And what this would do -- would, essentially,
take some of the important development elements that the city currently has and we can
get those applied in county developments. The idea being that as the city grows,
continues to grow outward and you have a county subdivision, it looks the same,
generally. Now, you know, over time you have some -- some elements that are
consistent, your landscape buffer, your street widths, your street lights, some of those
defining elements that are -- that can be consistent and they don't -- they don't make the
county subdivisions look substandard or stand out in a bad way. So, we have explored
that with them a little bit and what I'd like to talk with you about for just a few minutes is
a new approach to development review, so, again, having the county basically
implement some of our development standards in county subdivisions and, then, part
two of that would be a new way to, renegotiate.our.area of .impact a.nd our Title 9 stuff
with them, so the first part of that is the renegotiation process, so I just quickly have a
couple things on that. So, the draft language -- what we are hoping to -- to accomplish
with this is that we can work together at the staff level in a nutshell and that where we
agree and the staff agrees and there is no conflict, they will just take it through and
there really isn't a negotiation process, it's just, okay, thanks for sharing, your text
changes are really no impact to the county, we are all good. Where there may be
significant or maybe where there is some disagreement on where -- what the
appropriate policy is or where the area of impact line should be, then, yes, we need to
engage the elected official bodies and bring them together and renegotiate that or at
least have hearings and the elected officials decide, then, where the appropriate lines
are drawn or policies are decided. That all needs to be done within the existing state
code. We aren't proposing any changes to state code and that renegotiation process,
but -- but there is some wiggle room in that where we can just work together at the staff
level to make a lot of these happen. So, that's -- that's going on. We will continue to
work with them on that and Ijust -- that's more sort of an FYI thing for you that has been
a little bit of a sticky wicket. There is -- you know it's -- a lot of the stuff is just our
policies that we are trying to implement, but we have to go through -- jump through the
county hoops to have them recognize those as well. The part I want to spend a little bit
more time on is, again, this new development approach and some of the elements that
may be are appropriate for them to apply to county subdivisions, so today we received
transmittals from the county for developments in our area of impact and we provide
them comments back. But that's really all they are are comments. They can choose to
make them conditions of approval or not. So, again, what this will do is take some --
and I'm not proposing we just hand them our UDC and say, hey, please, enforce this for
us, but afew -- again, very important elements I believe anyways that are difficult to
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~' retrofit and expensive in the future, but ones that are very visible and can provide that
community identity into the future when the city limits get to the outer rim of our area of
impact. So, the ones that I have identified -- and I'm -- if you have others that's great or
if you don't like these that's fine, too. Streets. So, right now the county -- one of the
biggest issues that I ran into are private streets in the county. Very difficult for
connectivity in the future. It's very difficult for us as homeowners over time. Our road is
breaking down, can you help us do something with this street that's 15, 20 years old.
We don't have money in our HOA account to do this and it's -- sorry, it's a private road.
So, what I'd like to explore is some requirement that's -- if it's private that it be 50 feet
wide, that way we can maybe engage ACHD about taking that over and being a public
street. And even if it's private I would like to see that stubbed to an adjacent property
line, that way we do get some connectivity. So, that's one that I -- I think is an important
one to have their development, their planners, basically, look at when they are
reviewing county subdivisions. Another one I mentioned previously is land -- landscape
buffers along arterials. Not all roadways, just along arterials, and I'm not even quite
sure -- and this is, again, right off for some of your direction, is that just the consistency
in width or do we want to have them be -- like our requirements are one tree every 35
linear feet. I'm sort of of the mind that, you know, as long as we can preserve that width
that's okay. What they put in that I'm pretty open to, but I don't know if that's the same
vibe or if you even like the idea of having consistent landscape buffers. Again for most
of the traveling public that's, something that'd going to catch your eye.. You got a nice 25
foot landscape buffer and all of a sudden you have nothing next to a county subdivision.
So, that's one that I thought was pretty important. I have, by the way, vetted these with
Bruce Chatterton, so it's not just me, and my own -- and Pete, for that matter, before he
left -- most of these. And this is -- this is a list where it is at this time. Access to
arterials. So, again, something consistent -- consistency with our city code about the
access policy with the highway district and city code would be another one we would
like them to use. I think -- I don't think we are too far off today with the county users.
Street lights, another one that I have mentioned. I have talked with Tim Curns, the way
we believe it works today is that Ada County does pay the power and the HOA
maintains them. We do have installation standards currently that we could use that are
in 11-3A-21 and on the website for Public Works and their land use development
standards. Again, something that we like them to use again. I think we are pretty close
on some of those standards, some consistency already. Billboards. Prohibiting
billboards. And maybe there is other signs that you don't want to see, but that's
something to me that isn't consistent with what we are trying to do in the city, so if we
can get the county to say if you're in Meridian's area of impact no billboards. But, you
know, I don't know if that's something that the Council feels as strongly about or not or
any other signs that may be we think are inappropriate or even if that one is one that's
inappropriate. Fencing. A couple types of fencing that the county does allow are
barbed wire and electric wire. Again, we aren't talking about something that's ag in --
you know, farming the ground or has -- you know, doing what they are doing today, this
would be somebody that's trying to subdivide or do a commercial type endeavor in the
county, but barbed wire and electric wire fence is -- is -- we don't allow it in the city and
just potentially something that maybe we could ask the county not to. Again, this is --
these are potential elements. I'm not married to necessarily any of them and you can
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jump in at any time if you have any comments on them. Maybe the last one that I have
identified is pathways. Our pathway network would be very difficult to implement retrofit
in county subdivisions, so -- and I'm not sure if it's actually building out that pathway,
because it's going to be a pathway to nowhere, or if it's just preserving ten, 15, 20 feet
for that pathway easement and we can build it as the city limits get there and we have
those connections on either side through the pathway network. What I'm not
recommending -- Eagle is actually exploring having Ada County staff do their design
review and it's very cumbersome, if I'm a county planner, you got to know six different
city codes and standards, so I'm trying to keep it pretty simple and Ijust -- so those are
sort of the -- the elements that we have identified. And I'm going to pause. I do have
just one final conclusion, but are there any thoughts on any of things that maybe make a
county subdivision feel like a city subdivision in the future?
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: When I was reading through this the thought that came to me if they are in
the area of impact and the county was to develop say a -- kind of an estate type of
subdivision where there is acreage, that kind of changes things and I was trying to
remember what our code would allow, whether.it was five acres .or two acres„and.. if they
had, then, they allow, you know, well, you can have a horse or you can have a cow or --
you know. And things like electric wires -- I mean a lot of folks use those to -- to keep
them in. If there is a farmers market developed out there -- and I know we have talked
about this -- our own -- we have got issues with that from time to time. How do they --
how does that work? If it's -- if our code prohibits it, but they are really out in the
country, but they are in our area of impact, it's -- are those standards going to work?
And on the pathways I agree, I thought this -- my thought was the same as yours, they
construct a half mile and there is nowhere to go on either end of it and it does no good,
so just a couple thoughts that came to mind. I wasn't sure how that would work and I
don't know if you can shed any light on that.
Hood: Madam Mayor and Councilman Hoaglun, I can a little bit. Right now everything
in our area of impact is zoned RUT, which you can do five acre lot subdivisions. What
some of this would allow -- and that's typically what we see is residential. We see some
churches, we see -- I think it was an assisted living care facility and some of those
things in our area of impact. But those -- those estate subdivisions -- I don't necessarily
have any issue with -- with keeping your animals contained or if you need to use electric
wire or maybe even barbed wire in some instances for -- for protection of property.
What this will do would really be some of those other residential subdivisions that -- and
don't think they typically put up barbed wire or electric wire -- if somebody comes in
today and we can pull that permit, because it is allowed in the county, this isn't anything
new that comes in that's a -- essentially a residential subdivision where there is some
concern that it won't ever redevelop and we are stuck, essentially, with that. So, we
would work on them. And I'm not even sure that the barbed wire and electric wire
wouldn't work out, that -- their code would still trump in the county while it's in the
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county. Just something that I ran across comparing our codes going we don't allow
billboards, we don't allow electric fences, just to kind of point it out to say here is where
it is still kind of -- this has its rural feel and we have a more urban feel, so --
Hoaglun: Yeah. Madam Mayor and Caleb, I think we are in agreement, then, because
was thinking under normal subdivision standards that we have and if they are putting in
something like that, yes, if we can marry our -- our ordinances and requirements and
make them alike, that would be great.
Hood: That's the intent.
Hoaglun: Yeah. For those things I mean you can call it a subdivision, these estates,
but it is a little different --different thing, so -- and the fact that on the buffer to have that
and if they don't plant trees, if they do something else, that's fine. We have got that in
place so in the future when that's part of the city we can do some things.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: The obvious difficulty here is when the -- somebody in the county wants to
.make a development and they are planning a development that's really to an urban
density, but they are not contiguous in order to annex into the city and how one direction
would go to -- for the county not to approve any urban densities and that's I suppose
the general public assumption of what happens. But you know that there are going to
be developments that will eventually be in city, but aren't contiguous right now and so
they are through the county approval process and I appreciate what you're doing, the
direction you're going and as much as we can get the county to assume that something
that logically will be annexed at some point needs to meet our urban needs and that
even includes the public works issues of, you know, water and sewer and things that in
a rural density aren't as important or are actually done differently entirely. So, I
appreciate what you're doing and we do need to work with the county to make sure that
the assumption is that if it's in our area of impact that eventually it will be annexed some
day and it needs to be annexable.
De Weerd: I think you have hit a lot of the key aspects that we have talked about over
time. Certainly impact fees have been part of that and if they are going to develop
within the area of impact and they are utilizing our parks, mutual aid, the services of the
fire department, even though they are under a different taxing district, those should be
considerations as well and one of the most common or most frequently heard
comments I get are about lighting, street lighting, and sidewalks. So, I think it's a great
discussion. I'm excited that we are finally at a point perhaps with the county that they
will consider the standards that we have, as they have with other cities, and so it's an
important discussion.
Hood: And, Madam Mayor, I just want to be -- unlike our last discussion, we can move
forward and you will probably see that happen pretty quickly. This will probably go on
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over the next year. So, this isn't your first chance that some of these standards -- there
is going to be some negotiating on what they are willing to do for us and what they
aren't and --
De Weerd:. I was expecting it next week.
Hood: Yeah. I just want to temper expectations at this point, because they are willing
to work with us and us with them, but -- but this just, again, kind of thoughts on, you
know, a starting point. So, unfortunately, I will have to be back before you again and we
are going to have to talk about it some more, so -- but I will work from this and I got
some good notes and work with a couple of other tweaks to work with and --
De Weerd: And, Council, if there is any further discussion I would encourage you to
certainly let Caleb know. Yes, Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, one quick question. Since Public Works is here, they are up
next, and I wanted to ask is what about the underground utilities? Are standards going
to be the same when it comes to waterlines, clean water lines, sewer lines, those types
of things, if they have sewer. But we found in some instances that -- where we are
looking at taking over an entity they are substandard to what we require now, so --
De Weerd: We never did that in the past and so what we have seen coming -- rear it's
interesting head is kind of -- hopefully you won't see that as we move forward, but -- and
we don't extend services out beyond our city of impact -- city limits. I'm sorry, but my
daughter is leaving the country tomorrow, so I am leaving and turning it over to Council
President Hoaglun and, I apologize, but I have a date with a 19 year old.
Hoaglun: Anything else, Caleb?
Hood: Yeah. Just -- and it's in that same line, just real quick. And certainly Warren or
anyone else can chime in. Through this process it wouldn't prohibit the city from making
any site specific comments or requirements of a project. So, recently you had a project
that we had in our master plan -- I think it was a 30 or 40 foot wide sewer easement at
the top of a -- we can still make those site specific. In this location we need A -- fire
station or a substation or whatever. We can still make -- they will still transmit those
individual projects and we can look at those from a services standpoint, so we don't
need to retrofit either. These are the infrastructure -- our infrastructure. We haven't
talked about dry line, any -- you know, having these projects putting dry line sewer in or
any of that, but -- but we still -- we don't give up anything through the process of being
able to comment. So, that's my only -- my last comment.
Hoaglun: Well, that's good. It sounds like you have a good handle on it and it sounds
like we'd like to see you move forward on that.
Hood: Thank you.
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E. Public W®r6cs: Y 2012 Pr®ject CI®se ®ut Rep®rt
Hoaglun: Sounds good. Thank you, Caleb. Up next we have Public Works,
presentation on the FY-2012 project close out report. Warren, is that you or is that --
Stewart: I will do a brief introduction, Council President --
Hoaglun: Okay.
Stewart: -- Members of the Council. You guys want a break before we get started? It
might take us an hour or so. I was kidding.
Bird: We got Kyle, not Tom.
Stewart: Just to give you a little brief overview. As you are aware, our purchasing
policy that we -- was passed about a year and a half, two years ago, requires that at the
end of the year or sometime during the year -- we have chosen to do it at the end of the
year -- we come back to you and kind of give you an update on all the projects that we
completed in the past year and kind of give you just a wrap up of those items. We have
a good list of information and projects to talk to you about tonight. Very proud of the
staff for the work and effort that they have ,done this past year .and, for. the .work and
effort in putting this together and you will get an opportunity to hear from them and
probably some of them that you haven't had an opportunity to hear from before. So,
that's going to be great. I also wanted to express my appreciation to you -- to the
Council for the support that you have given us in allowing us to do the projects and get
the work accomplished and with that I'm going to turn over the rest of the time to Kyle,
he's going to kind of MC this program, if you will.
Hoaglun: Thank you. Kyle, go ahead.
Radek: Mr. President, Council Members, thanks for your time today. We have about
19 projects that have been completed during fiscal year '12 to brief you on. In the
interest of time we have made our presentation pretty concise. We understand if you
get a little excited about some of these projects and want to ask some questions, but we
would ask you to hold your questions until the end and we will go back if you like. For
example, you're probably wondering where this site is on this picture here. This is our
ground reservoir number three alternate site number 17 in the Seven Devils.
Bird: I was going to say, you have cutthroat in there, don't you?
Radek: We don't -- yeah. We don't have any neighbors there. We think the pipeline
cost might knock the project out, though. This is the team of people that make it all
happen. We have a team of ten, eight of which -- or eight of whom manage capital
projects. You will notice a new name here, Ashley Newbry. Ashley is our newest staff
engineer. Ashley, can you stand up, please, and be recognized. Ashley has not
completed any projects so far, so she will not be -- in fact, she's woefully behind on
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most of her projects. We hope that her performance improves significantly and she will
be up here next year presenting. But -- but to the most extent possible in this
presentation the project managers that completed these projects will present them.
Before we get into the descriptions of our projects I want to clarify that this is the project
close out report and only represents the projects that we completed in the last fiscal
year. Many of our capital projects take several years to complete and have several
subject projects and they include plan design and building. Additionally, each of the
completed projects you see easily represents two or more different sub projects. Each
of those needs to be scoped, requested through purchasing, administered, inspected
and paid. You're probably aware that we are adopting e-Builder this year and we are
going to use it to manage our spending and our projects. Up until now we have been
using a database the last few years and I just wanted to mine that database and give
you a little idea of even though we are only reporting on 19 completed projects this year,
the eight people that work on these projects made 299 financial commitments in fiscal
year 2012 and paid 580 invoices on 194 different projects. This is a busy group of
people. They assigned themselves 396 different high level tasks for project and
completed 258 of them. And that's just my point. This represents a small bit of what we
-- what we are doing every year. I have worked with all these people on various
projects. I can tell you that they take a lot of pride in the products they build to serve our
customers and that they manage costs like the money was coming out of their own
pockets. So,. )'m ,proud to be. part of .this group..,. Our agenda will be water supply
projects, water-sewer line replacements. Water, sewer and recycled water extensions
and wastewater treatment plant and sewer projects. In water supply we completed VFD
harmonics filter upgrades, three sites and well evaluation and reconstruction projects at
three sites. Variable frequency drives are used in most of our well sites to control the
speed of the motors running the pumps based on demand. However, the variable
frequency drives can create current and voltage distortions that reflects back into the
system. So, Idaho Power has mandated that we mitigate this by adding harmonic filters
to the well sites and so we have been doing this for a few years, we completed three,
Wells 14, 15 and 26 this year at a cost of 24,000 dollars and no contract changes.
Brent Blake has been managing all of these so far and has been doing such an
outstanding job that Idaho Power actually hand delivered a letter thanking us for the --
for the good work that we have been doing to help clean up their distribution system.
During the last year the Public Works Department continued its well evaluation and
reconstruction program. We were able to successfully evaluate Wells 12, 23 and 24.
Clint Worthington managed Well 12, David Allison managed Well 23 and I did Well 24.
The total cost for all three wells was 119,000 dollars. Atypical well evaluation includes
camera survey of the wells, cleaning of the wells -- of the well casing and the screens,
as well as an inspection and evaluation of the pump and motors and of all these three
wells we did not find the need to perform any reconstruction work, which is good news.
Well 23, however, was a unique project where we used the latest technology in the -- in
the industry to analyze the contribution of different areas of well streams to the overall
flow and now Clint Worthington is going to talk about our water and sewer line
replacement program.
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Hoaglun: Kyle, before he begins, do -- do any of the new people who have never
presented before Council know about the initiation where we ask them a question they
can't possibly answer, but we expect an answer? Do they know -- did you warn them
about that?
Radek: Mr. President, I don't think they know about that, but I think they know now.
Hoaglun: Okay. All right. Let's proceed. Clint.
Worthington: So, this next slide is a -- to give you a brief summary of our water and
sewer line replacement program. This is our third year implementing the sewer and
water line replacement program. These programs have increased our efforts to stay on
top of replacing aging, undersized infrastructure and have mainly been focused around
the downtown area today, the older downtown area. The reason for these water and
sewer line replacements are to remove aging, deteriorated infrastructure, low water
pressure, fire flow, and insufficient sewer capacity and groundwater infiltration. Benefits
of the replacement to, of course, increase water pressure and fire flow and sewer
capacity. Reduce groundwater infiltration into the sewer lines and reduced risk of a
water line failure and links. May also provide for more reliable services. Coordination of
those programs, we try to coordinate water and sewer projects together when we can to
reduce the costs .and. to .reduce the customer impacts. The .overall cost ,of projects
completed this year was 927,000 dollars. This includes the design and construction of
five different projects. Water and sewer line replacement project completed in 2012
include the following: The West Maple Avenue water line replacement project. West
Carlton, Northwest 11th to Northwest Washington Drive and West State to Camilla
water line replacement. Site nine sewer line replacement. Site 10 and 11 sewer line
replacement. And Tuscany and Paramount sewer line repairs. The project managers
are now going to go over their individual projects.
Radek: When I introduced Clint one thing I neglected to say is the reason he was up
here introducing the water and sewer line replacements is he is responsible for -- for
creating and managing the water line replacement program and has been doing an
outstanding job doing it. The Maple Avenue project was completed by Brent Blake, who
had to leave for a class this evening and replaced 1,100 feet of old six inch cast iron
water main with eight inch PVC pipe. It also upgraded 28 water services and installed
two new fire hydrants. This project brought increased fire flow and water quality -- and
better water quality for residents in the area and the original agreements on the contract
were 150,000 dollars, 7,000 dollars in change orders and the total contract price was
163,000 dollars.
Boyd: Good evening. Then next project was the water line replacement that took
place on West Carlton, Northwest -- Northwest 11th and West State and Camilla Drive.
This project we replaced 2,800 linear foot of eight -- undersized cast iron water main
with new PVC eight inch pipe, as well as all the water services and we utilized open
trench method. This increased the fire flow and improved water quality. The original
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agreement for this project was 258,000. Changes to the project was 14,000 dollars, for
a final project cost of 272.
Allison: Members of the Council good evening. First project on the cover was sewer
line replacement site nine. This sewer line was located between Gem Avenue and
Franklin Avenue near the bowling alley out to Franklin. This project was unique in that
the eight inch sewer line actually was in below the Meridian Ford building. So, we
utilized pipe bursting to replace this line in particular. Original cost on this project was
132,000. During construction we encountered a seepage bed was wasn't on any of the
plans, so that resulted in a 5,000 dollar change order, for a total construction cost of
137,000 dollars. Next project was sewer line replacements 10A, 10B and 11. These
were eight inch sewer lines that were found in the alleyways located throughout different
areas of downtown. Pipe bursting was also utilized in this project because of the -- the
low impact to disruption of services. The original contract was 123,000 dollars. We
were able to retain a couple of the existing manholes for a savings of 4,000 dollars, for a
total contract closeout price of 119. The last project was the sewer line repairs project.
These were 65 cracked laterals and T's located throughout the Paramount and Tuscany
Subdivision. These were infrastructure and parts that had failed shortly there -- after
installation. As you can see in the bigger picture here we have a cracked T and that's
actually a stream of water flowing in. That's groundwater flowing into the Tuscany area.
The .pipes here in this subdivision were as deep as ?5 feet, so open .,cut. was. -- vyas
pretty much ruled out from the beginning. Pipe line inspection utilizing in situ fiberglass
repair patch -- you can see here in the darker picture, that's with the patch in place.
During the project we identified additional cracked T's and laterals, so that was the -- the
ultimate change order of 17,000 dollars. Total contract price was 236,000 dollars.
Since the installation of this subdivision and other subdivisions we have implemented
our extended warranty surety program to help mitigate these types of projects --
problems in the future by identifying these before we take ownership of -- of the
projects.
Hoaglun: My question was was this a project before we had implement --
Allison: Yes.
Hoaglun: Okay. So -- real quick could you give your name? Dean is -- records all this
and your name and the name of the speaker before so we can put that on the public
record.
Allison: I'm David Allison and John Boyd was the one prior to me.
Hoaglun: Okay, David. Appreciate it.
Dolsby: Clint Dolsby. Council President, Members of the Council, the next group of
projects that we are going to cover are the water, sewer, and recycled water extensions.
These projects are done in large part to improve -- build and improve our distribution
and collection system. Also we run into this quite a bit where we have Ada County
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Highway District has a project and we put in our utilities in coordination with their
projects, such as with the split corridor project. And a lot of time we have our water and
sewer projects -- or water and sewer we can combine with the same project where we
put down our sewer lines and water in one project. In fiscal year '12 we had
approximately 850,000 dollars' worth of projects, which was split up into five different
projects. The projects that were completed in fiscal year'12 included the intersection of
Pine and Linder. Franklin, Touchmark to Five Mile. The Pine trunk sewer connector.
The intersection of Ten Mile and Ustick. And the wastewater treatment plant recycled
water on site irrigation project. With that I will turn it over to the individual project
managers to present their close out reports.
Radek: Again, Brent Blake finished this project and I will be reporting on it for him. This
is -- was one of the many projects that we do in conjunction with ACRD road projects.
Our priority within this project was to relocate our water main in several areas to allow
for the relocation of Nine Mile Creek. We were also able to replace four fire hydrants
and nine water services during the project, which benefits the residents and businesses
in the area. Original agreements on this project were 207,000 dollars and there was a
subtractive change order or 10,000 dollars, bringing the overall cost to 197,000 dollars.
Hoaglun: So, Brent's the big winner so far, he's got the biggest reduction in the project
costs. Yes. Tim..
Curns: I'm Tim Curns and I was the project manager for our Franklin Road, Touchmark
to Five Mile Road. Although this ACHD project was -- went from Touchmark Drive,
which is there just east of RC Willey, all the way to Five Mile, our portion just went to the
city limits, which was about 1,700 feet east of Touchmark. And what we did here was
install a water line extension to the extent of the city limits there and which sounds like
kind of a boring project, but this is an important one, because we have a lot of parcels
out there that are primed and ready for commercial, industrial development and so we
did install quite a few water main stubs with this project and also a set up there at the
end of the city limits for future connection if we want to do an emergency connection to
United Water system, which is something we have done in some of the other projects.
The original cost was 168,000. We had net changes of minus 7,000, and the total cost
of 161,000 dollars.
Hoaglun: Thank you. And for Dean go ahead and give your name before you -- so he
can get the right name to the right person. Go ahead.
Boyd: My name is John Boyd. I was up here a little earlier. The next project was the
water, sewer and recycled water extensions at the intersection of Ten Mile and Ustick
Road. That project was also done in conjunction with ACRD. For that we installed
about 440 linear foot of 12 inch recycled water main to the west of the intersection. We
added two fire hydrants and we adjusted water lines and -- adjusted water lines to avoid
separation conflicts with other utilities. We also adjusted some existing water valves
and manholes and things like that that's pretty normal with an ACRD project. The
original agreement on that project was 86,000 dollars. We had net changes of minus
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i 3,000 dollars, which has given us a total for that project of 83,000 dollars. The next
project was a pretty good size one. It was a recycled water project out to the -- where
we put 3,600 foot of recycled water main out to the west of the wastewater treatment
plant to irrigate 17 acres. We also constructed the watering pond that will serve future
wastewater treat plant projects out there. Our original agreement on that was 104,000
dollars. The dewatering pond cost of 78,000 dollars. Net changes to the project was
20,000 dollars, for a total of 202. Oh. Sorry. Skipped one. The other project that I did
was the Pine trunk sewer connector. We installed about 1,400 foot of 12 inch sewer
pipe between Pine Street, Ten Mile intersection and the eastern side of Fuller Park.
This project completed the Pine trunk sewer enabling abandonment of the Moser's
Farm and Merrywood lift stations, which were in need of some repairs estimated at
about 75,000 dollars. The original agreement cost 204,000 dollars. We had net change
orders to the project of 5,000, for an overall project cost of 209.
Dolsby: Clint Dolsby again. The last, but certainly not least group of projects that we
are going to present on today are the wastewater treatment plant projects. We
completed three projects in fiscal year '12, the grit classifier replacement project,
secondary clarifier retrofit project, and the tertiary filter building project at a cost of
approximately two and a half millions dollars. The grit classifier replacement project
was the replacement of an old worn out piece of equipment at the wastewater plant.
..The. grit ..classifier is located just after the screens.at the head works at the_front end of
the plant. It's meant to get lot of the grit and sandy type of material out of the
wastewater, so that it doesn't damage the processes downstream of the grit classifier,
so it extends the life of a lot of the other type of processes, as opposed to not having
this piece of equipment. The original agreement for this contract was 175,000 dollars.
Net changes were 8,000 dollars related to an additional light and some electrical and
heat tracing, for a total of 183,000 dollars. The secondary clarifier retrofit project was a
retrofit of our older secondary clarifier number three. Out at the wastewater treatment
plant currently we have three operating secondary clarifiers, two of them are larger
clarifiers with what they call a float bottom. How a secondary clarifier works is the solids
will settle out to the bottom of the clarifier, then, move towards the center where they
are removed from the clarifier so the two larger clarifiers that have slope bottoms this
works very well, but this particular clarifier number three has a flat bottom. So, what this
project did was took out the existing mechanism, which was designed for a float bottom
clarifier and we put in a different style of mechanism that removed the solids throughout
the length of the bottom of the mechanism, so it operates more efficiently as a
secondary clarifier should. Original agreement for this was 1.1 million dollars. Net
changes of minus 12,000 dollars, a lot related to the fact we didn't end up having to pay
taxes on the city supplied equipment gave us a deductive change order, for a total of
1.1 million. The last project is the tertiary filter building project, which provides a
building over all of the four tertiary filters at the wastewater treatment plant. Prior to this
we had had some issues, especially in the wintertime with freezing conditions out at the
wastewater plant kind of wreaking havoc with the traveling bridge filter. This will also
extend the life of all of the filters out at the wastewater treatment plant. Original
agreement for this project was 1.2 million dollars. Changes of 95,000 dollars related to
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some utility relocations, exploratory excavation, some additional pinging that we had out
there, for a total of 1.3 million dollars.
Hoaglun: And I'm sure that the last few weeks of this cold weather this building has
Been greatly appreciated.
Dolsby: It has been invaluable. Yeah. I can't say enough how the wastewater
treatment plant operators like it.
Hoaglun: Good.
Dolsby: So, in summary, we completed 19 projects, as Kyle said, for a total contract --
contracted amount of 4.4 million dollars. The actual cost, including change orders of 4.5
million dollars, for a total change order allowance of 100,000 dollars or equate that to
the change order percentage of two percent in fiscal year'12. With that we will take any
questions that you have on any of the projects or anything we have presented.
Bird: Mr. President?
Hoaglun: Councilman Bird.
Bird: Clint, I know 2,000 -- or two percent on that total isn't much in change orders and
certainly like the deduct change orders, but is there a particular reason why every
project but one or two have change orders? Is it our outside consultants that are not
getting the right information? I know it's underground and it's hard to get the right
information, but it seems like every one we had change orders. Is there a reason that --
have you traced it to see if one consulting firm is getting more than the other or -- you
know.
Stewart: Councilman President, Councilman Bird, if you don't mind, I think you can
equate -- but, you know, like you said, most -- I think it's important to recognize the fact
that a two percent change order on all those projects is fantastic as an industry
standard. But we do -- most of the work that we do is underground and quite frequently
we run into things underground that are -- weren't expected. We are not -- we didn't
know they were there and I think in most cases that is what happens, you get
underground, you expose things, you find out that things weren't quite how you
anticipated they were based on as-built drawings and so forth. I don't think you could
say that one consulting firm or another consulting firm -- that there was any significant
difference there. There is a broad spectrum of consulting firms involved in some of
those. There were a few change orders that you saw that were a little more significant
than others. I know in one case we had a change that we actually -- as the project was
going on we -- we took advantage of an opportunity to add something to the job that
was needed, you know, speaking specifically of the one at the wastewater treatment
plant where we added the dewatering pond. For years they had just been running a
pipe out there and finding a spot and dewatering anywhere that it happens to work,
which was not a very good idea and we decided, you know, we have a contractor out on
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January 8, 2013
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site, he's going to be making modifications because of the project he's on that would
make continuing to do that more difficult. We decided, you know, it's time to go ahead,
we had money available for that and we said it's time to go ahead and put in a
dewatering pond, so that we can do projects right in the future. So, it was a conscious
decision to add that to the project. We felt like it was a valuable add to the city. But I
think in the -- in most cases it's literally -- I know in the filter building project there was
some -- we actually ended up with a pretty good price on that, but there was cost up
front, because the foundation design that we had anticipated before we could actually
expose the whole site, we anticipated putting in a particular kind of foundation. When
they started doing the digging out there we found out that there was so much
infrastructure in the ground that that type of foundation simply would not work.
Therefore, they had to backtrack, redesign the foundation, in order to accommodate a
different type of structure on that site. And so it did -- it did add to the cost, but that was
directly related to the fact we were trying to make assumptions about what was in the
ground and it wasn't until they actually started opening it all up that we just looked at it
and said, you know, that's just not going to work.
Bird: Follow up.
Hoaglun: Go ahead, Councilman Bird.
Bird: Warren, that's great and I don't consider the -- when you add something to a job,
that isn't a change order, that's an add to the contract, like the line and stuff on that deal
and I hope, then, that our as-builts that we are doing now are so accurate that we know
when they start replacing these things in 20, 25 years, whatever it is, they can look at it
and see that it is in there. If anything's added I'm sure that will be put into the as-builts.
I hope.
Stewart: Council President, Councilman Bird, certainly we do a vastly better job today
than we have done historically at documenting -- excuse me -- documenting where
infrastructure is located. As you might imagine the wastewater treatment plant, if you
have taken a look at underground drawings of that, it is like spaghetti out there and so
that -- it does present a bigger challenge there than it does in other locations.
Bird: And that's what Idon't -- that's what I want to get in place is as-builts that are --
that 20 years from now if you need to look something up -- you know, being in the
construction world I have been downtown Boise and down jobs and the as-builts were
exactly -- the building was built as the as-builts in a 30, 35 year old building, so it's very
important to get the right as-builts and that's our responsibility.
Dolsby: Council President, Council Member Bird, we have also undertaken kind of a
major effort to identify all the underground lines at the wastewater plant and create a
base map for that. We have civil surveys, done a lot of that work already, and they
have developed a draft of a base map that we can, then, hand out to consultants as
they do designs and that will continue to be refined. I mean it's not perfect by any
means now, but it's a lot more than we have ever had before.
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Bird: You can't have enough information on something like that, in my opinion.
Hoaglun: A question that comes to mind and, you know, we look at the cost, but there
is two elements, there is time and money, so when you saw the money component, how
are you doing on getting projects done on time?
Stewart: Council President, Councilmen, much better. You will see that (think -- I can't
remember if we have had the -- we did report on that a little bit. For instance, our
execution rate this year was -- as a department -- I know when I came in I think the first
year that I came to work for the City of Meridian -- and there is reasons we have shifted
to a just-in-time financing model, which accommodated for a portion of that, but the first
year that I was here our execution rate on -- on the projects was 46 percent I believe.
Forty-six or 48 percent. This year the adjusted execution rate for the capital projects
was 82 percent. So, you know, it's a huge improvement as far as our ability to execute
and complete the projects that we had planned for a specific year. Some projects we
actually plan out over multiple years, so, of course, we won't complete those until the
schedule says that we are going to complete them, because they just take that long to
do, so --
Hoaglun: And I recognize there is variables like when. you go, underground and find
some things you weren't planning on, it throws schedules off and whatnot. So, that's a
great number to hear, because it certainly things moving forward and helps out a lot,
so --
Stewart: Well -- and your support of -- of efforts like e-Builder is going to be significant
help in that. We now have scheduling tools that we haven't had before, we have project
management tools that we haven't had before, where, you know, working through the
implementation of that, of course, there is growing pains associated with
implementation, but as we get through that I think that that will also be a great and
valuable tool, which you guys have helped to support that will help us to get even better.
Hoaglun: I thought as engineers, though, Warren, all you needed was a slide rule, so --
Stewart: I'm sure glad that's not all we have to deal with.
Hoaglun: Anything else on presentation, Warren? Great. Thank you for the
presentation.
Bird: Thank you, guys.
F. Public Works: Source Water Protection Area of ®rilling
Concern Presentation
Hoaglun: Public Works is not done yet. Public Works is not done yet. We have source
water protection area of drilling concern presentation. Kyle.
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Radek: Mr. President, Council Members me again and we did that one in 25 minutes.
Perhaps we can do this one in less. Incidentally, 82 percent and I think last year we
were 72 percent overall -- it's kind of actually unfortunate, because e-Builder -- you can't
get much better than 82 percent. There is not much room to improve on that. But I
know e-Builder has got a lot of ancillary benefits, too. What I'm here to talk to you about
now is source water protection area of drilling concerns. I'm going to take you through a
little review of what we are doing with an area of drilling concern, how we got there, how
we made that decision, how that was our chosen source water protection strategy that
Council selected. What we have done on that front in the last year. What the next
steps are and I'm going to talk about a key decision we need to make and I'm going to
ask for Council guidance on that and give a recommendation and, then, we have time
for discussion and Council direction on it. You may remember this slide from a year or
so ago. We have really two -- two facts that we know contribute to our -- to our primary
groundwater threat and I believe you all received for this item, an executive summary of
the report we put together. I think it was aone-page executive summary and the report
is about 24 pages, so it goes into a lot of detail. But, essentially, there are contaminants
out there in the aquifer system. There are some natural and some introduced and the
aquifer system -- this is an extremely simplified cross-section of the aquifer system. We
rely on the -- what's commonly referred to as the Pierce Gulch sands aquifer for a lot of
our water supply, which is a .deeper .aquifer and .the .alluvial aquifer is -- is generally
above that. Different -- vastly different water chemistry throughout and there is actually
-- there is not just two sections of the -- of the aquifer, there is many and there is lots of
layers that have lots of different chemistry and between those layers there are
impermeable of clay or silt stone or other -- other natural occurring materials that -- that
keep that water and the chemistry separated and keep contaminants from moving
downward and what happens is when a well gets drilled and it doesn't get sealed
properly it creates a hole in those natural protective layers and that's what you see on
this -- if I can draw on it here. That's what you see on this well right here. That's your
unsealed well and you have this water going -- moving between here and here. That's a
yucky green contaminant layer, so, of course, you don't want that and, then, you have
got aman -- a human produced spill here that can find its way in there where it wouldn't
-- wouldn't normally go there, but the well is going to allow it to go down here and it's
going to cause a lot of problems. So, that's what we view as our -- as our primary threat
to our source water quality. So, we presented that to you last -- last year and really
provided the options of, you know, we can try to do this -- protect this through a city
ordinance or we can do an area of joint concern with the Idaho Department of Water
Resources. We brought in Rob Whitney from the Idaho Department of Water
Resources to kind of testify on how -- how one thing might work better than another or
one thing might not work at all and it was decided we should move forward with an area
of joint concern and how we would work it is it would change drilling rules for a particular
location or a particular area that would be designated and it would be based on 20
years of scientific research that we have been doing and case studies that the city has
already been engaged in. The good things about it is that you wouldn't have a conflict
with the Department of Water Resources for who is in charge of putting out standards
for drilling wells, because they firmly believe that they are and I'm sure that we don't
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January 8, 2013
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have a lot of argument against that. Additionally, they have the clear authority to
designate an area of joint concern. We wouldn't have -- potentially anyway we would
not have any administrative or enforcement costs. These would be rules that they
would -- they would administer and they would do the permitting and the inspection.
And it wouldn't limit us to city jurisdiction versus having an ordinance. We would be
talking -- we are going to be talking about the areas we want to go for here in a few
slides, but -- but certainly just because something's in the county, if it's in the city limits
it's going to contribute to our source water quality if it -- if it allows contamination to go
into our aquifers that we use. The downside to doing area of joint concern is that a
process to establish one takes time and takes science. But the good news is that we
have gotten a lot of that accomplished and another down side is that stakeholders --
some stakeholders may protest an area of joint concern. So, the actions that we have
completed so far is we have had a lot of -- a lot of meetings with the Department of
Water Resources staff in saying here is what we want to do, here is what we are
planning on doing, and we have gotten a lot of feedback and the Department of Water
Resources has actually thought about how they are going to respond and what their
options for -- for administration are going to be and we have developed an out-reach
plan so that we are prepared to launch whatever our decision is and -- and go out and
meet with the stakeholders, talk about -- talk about what it is and the effects and try to
get people on board. We have developed the scientific evidence and we have
developed the report and we have developed a draft report and application .that we .can.
submit to the Department of Water Resources and we are ready to do that.
Hoaglun: Kyle, can we back up to that slide real quick?
Radek: Sure.
Hoaglun: When you talk about out-reach plan developed, I mean you got the science,
you have held the meetings, how is that discussion going to occur? Are you going to go
to a city like -- take Kuna to our south and say, you know what, this is of concern to us
and here is what we are going to do -- which is a little different than going out there and
saying, you know, we have some concerns, would you be interested in supporting this
effort? I mean how you approach that could determine resistance, acceptance. Has
that been thought through yet?
Radek: Mr. President, exactly. And that's one of the things we are here to get guidance
on and -- and we have -- we know that we have to talk to these people and I -- I fully
support the concept of the latter example you gave which is, yeah, here is -- you know --
you know, come with us, you know. This is -- this is an issue we want to -- we want you
to understand it, we want to explain it to you and have you -- have you support it, too.
We don't want to feel like we are forcing something on people or we don't want them to
feel like we are forcing it on them.
Hoaglun: And, then, you will be sure that you have the discussion with all the area
stakeholders, if you will, before you submit the application. I mean if you get that cart
before the horse you might never have some people on board, so --
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Radek: Mr. President, that's -- that's my idea is that you have to do that outreach before
you blindside them with an application at the Department of Water Resources and that's
one thing we are going to talk about in a few slides is -- depending on the decision we
make, outreach could be significantly different and it could have a different effect. So,
I'm going to cover that in a little more detail.
Hoaglun: Great. Thank you.
Radek: So, the key decision we have to make to move forward is what should the area
of drilling concern be and we really have two options. One is the Meridian impact area,
which is a political boundary, and the other is an area based on the impact area and the
groundwater flow that's upstream of the impact area. So, that would contribute to our
source water and that would be the scientific boundary. So, here is a graphic of what
we are talking about. Of course you're all familiar with the area of impact and that would
be the yellow area. Hydrogeological scientific boundary essentially upstream in the
groundwater is -- takes us up to the New York Canal, which is the groundwater divide.
It's where, essentially, we have the -- we have the alluvial aquifer being fed by canals
and the New York Canal being the primary one. And so you can see on this map that
we -- that we enter the Kuna service area, we enter the United Water service area, we
enter Boise, Kuna, and maybe most significantly we are into the Boise. Project .Board of
Control, which is a -- which is a big factor in what decision we make. So, if we go with
the scientific boundary, the larger boundary, the pros are that it provides the best
protection for our surface water -- I'm sorry, not surface water, our source water.
Another pro is that the Department of Water Resources would prefer that boundary,
because it makes scientific sense and, as a matter of fact, if we suggest the other
boundary, the impact area boundary, they may take it to the scientific boundary, which
may be a -- which may be a strategy for us. The cons of having the scientific boundary,
the larger boundary, is that, obviously, it involves more local government and more
jurisdictions, more stakeholders, the more opportunities for people to have a problem
with it and there are stakeholders that might have a problem with it, there are people
that want to be able to drill wells cheaper. Boise -- Boise project, Ada County has a lot
of rural residents that need to drill domestic wells. We think that there is significant
advantages for rural residents to -- to having these more stringent well construction
standards, but they certainly do cost more up front. We think over time they pay for
themselves, but -- but it would likely not be viewed that way. So, overall there is -- there
may be a lower chance of success if we go with the scientific boundary. To go with the
impact area boundary the pros are that we limit those jurisdictions and we probably --
it's probably easier and less costly to achieve it and it allows us to focus on -- assuming
we would achieve it, the mechanics of the area of drilling concern. How would it work.
You know, the administration. How would IDWR do those permits, how would they
inform us, what extent are we going to -- you know, what role are we going to play in it.
Certainly one option is for no cost and no role for us. But there is also different degrees
of us playing a -- having some activity in the permitting and the inspection of those
wells. And if the Department of Water Resources pushes for the scientific boundary,
then, they are the driver for that and not us. The cons, of course, is that that -- that
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boundary is not wholly based on science, it would provide us with some degree of
protection for our source water, but -- but not as much as we would like to see. So, we
have two options. We can move forward with the scientific boundary and outreach to
the stakeholders that are affected by the scientific boundary and, then, you know,
possibly we go out there and we find out some news that we don't like and, you know,
people aren't happy with it and we say, okay, well, all right, well, let's go back and
regroup and we even come back to Council and say, well, we can -- we see some
people that are going to say, well, we are not going to put up with this, we are going to --
we are going to fight this and so we come back and go the other route. And, of course,
the other route would be option two is move forward with the area of impact and
consider expanding it later and it could be expanded by the Department of Water
Resources as I previously mentioned. Now, the recommendation from Public Works is
to move forward with the scientific boundary, but I have to tell you that there is a person
in the room here that is -- is desperately trying to get me to change my mind on that and
that's Ed Squires, our hyrdogeologist, who has helped with this project, who is also
available for comment and discussion as we move forward, but he's been involved in
some -- certainly some -- a lot of political issues regarding water rights and ground
water and well drilling in the past. He represented us in the well drilling rules update a
couple years ago and his feeling is that is if we move forward with option one we might
not be able to go back. It may be something that is -- that -- that opens up a can of
worms,that we can't get back into the can. So, that's the. kind of discussion I would like
to have and kind of get Council's expertise and guidance moving forward.
Hoaglun: Councilman Bird.
Bird: Yeah. Kyle, I agree with you, I think that the scientific boundary, to my thinking
right now without knowing anymore than I know, is the way to go, because you can
contaminate out there and get into our water. But I'd like to have Ed explain -- I mean
he's an expert on water. I'd like to have him explain why he don't think that that option
one is the best option.
Radek: And certainly -- and certainly, you know -- Ed, if you want to come up.
Certainly he's going to agree that -- that that area is what we need to shoot for.
Bird: And I want to -- and I want to know why politically he don't think we should go that
route.
Hoaglun: Yeah. I appreciate hearing from you, Ed. You know, let's start here and if we
can't achieve that, then, we can go here, but if we can't put the toothpaste back in the
tube, then, we better know if that's -- if there is a problem there. So, if you wouldn't
mind enlightening us.
Squires: For the record, Ed Squires is my name. I have been a hydrogeological
consultant for the city for the past 24 years or so and I have worked with Kyle for a
couple of years now I think on this area of drilling concern in recognizing the need for it
and doing most of the scientific research behind it, as you well know, and as Kyle said, I
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definitely want the hydro boundary. I mean that makes the most sense for all the
reasons that Kyle cited. That's where we want to get to. But having worked for the city
on the changes to negotiated rulemaking on the well drilling side of things, I have first-
hand knowledge to the kind of opposition that we can get into and so whichever
decision you make tonight I will be thrilled with it. I mean I just -- I'm very happy that we
are moving forward with this. I think it's a really progressive, positive thing to do. But I
am concerned about the -- the political aspects of it and what those aspects are is that if
you get too many jurisdictions involved, if we get too many people -- too many people
opposed to it I'm worried about the ability to accomplish it and in particular, you know,
one group, the drilling group, the drillers have a very strong lobby in the legislature, they
have a very strong lobby at the Department of Water Resources -- they may see this as
a pretty serious precedent statewide that they just want to stem, because they don't
want to see this kind of idea proliferated, because it, essentially, makes one of -- well,
the most prolific drilling method in the state of Idaho prohibited and that's the air rotary
drilling method and those are the type of air rotary cable tool, the drill and drive so-
called percussion drilling methods are the methods that end up with these annular
spaces and are unsealed. You just can't seal them. It's impossible. Okay? And so 98
percent of the drillers use that method and so it could be seen as a -- as a major, you
know, step forward to quashing their business and stopping them from making a living.
I think there is also a perception that, you know, if we ask for the area of impact we are
kind of looking out for, jurisdiction, we are not trying to -- as Kyle said put -- push our
ideas on these other areas. I have spoken with Gordon Law at Kuna of this for years
and he's behind it, but that doesn't mean that his mayor and council are moving behind
it, because they have got a lot of big areas out in the country that aren't served by the --
by municipal well system. So, my thought is that we would do it in phases. We still go
for this scientific boundary, but -- and I think Kyle said this pretty well, if we go for our
area of impact that means that we can -- and I think there is a pretty good chance of
that happening. I think we stand a pretty good chance of success -- and, by the way, to
just blowing off a little bit, the other thing that concerns me for you as my client is I don't
want to go spend a quarter of a million dollars on an administrative hearing, which could
easily happen. But if we go I think for the area of impact -- and as Kyle mentioned, we
still put that slide in there that shows with the boundary in recognition that we
understand what the hydrogeologic implications are, but we are going for the area of
impact, the department may take it upon their shoulders to go and say, well, we are
going to make it to here. But one thing that the department has -- has broached that we
haven't talked to you about is that when they designate this area of drilling concerns
they may either designate it as a formally designated area under the statute that allows
for area drilling concern or it may just simply administer it as one and I like the other
idea and so what -- asking for the area of drilling concern, to repeat myself, what it does
for us is it allows us to immediately get into the mechanics of, okay, how is this going to
happen, who is going to do what, what's going to be the push back -- all this stuff that
we get in, rather than go through two years of multi-jurisdictional anguish and spend all
that money and, then, end up finding out that the area drilling isn't even going to work
for us. So, those are my concerns and I'm happy whichever way you go, because I
think we are going in the right direction, but I -- but I disagree a little bit with Kyle and
the Public Works in that I don't think choosing the one is -- necessarily rights off the
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i other, but I am concerned that if we go from the scientific boundary and we get into the
quagmire -- and I think the Council President said it perfectly, is that it's kind of hard to
put the worms back in the can after everybody is all stirred up.
Bird: That's right.
Squires: And so, anyway, those were my thoughts.
Hoaglun: Thank you. Questions for Ed? Councilman Bird.
Bird: I got one question. Kyle, now if we just stay within our impact we -- while we
should talk peaking and stuff, we don't -- is United Water in some of our impact? I know
they got water out to the church out here, but that goes away once we get water out
there. Or supposed to go.
Radek: Councilman Bird, they do provide water in some of our impact area and, as a
matter of fact, we have talked to United Water about this and about an area of joint
concern in our impact area and they have no -- no issue with it.
Bird: Follow up.
Hoaglun: Councilman Bird.
Bird: Kyle, do you or Ed, either one, have an idea of what additional cost to drill a well to
do this over the way they are drilling now? Is it ten, 15, 20 percent or --
Squires: Council President, Councilman Bird, it's more than that. It can be double.
Bird: It can be double?
Squires: Uh-huh. But, you know, I have to -- I have to put a caveat on it and that I don't
think that the other well -- wells are adequate. I don't think just because of a -- you
know, the city has no issue I don't think with somebody drilling a domestic well for their
own use at all, but it can't compromise the whole water resources. The very fortunate
thing that we have going for us is that only a very very small number of the wells that
have been drilled in the Meridian area go below 200 feet and -- but that's what we are
worried about it's like you take the Meridian Heights area, there is 300 wells over there
around those Meridian Heights wells that are completed at the same zone that is
drawing the radionuclide water that we have at Well 23 and in other places. Well, once
that becomes widely known -- I mean the city can't produce that water, because it's a
health threat. Those radionuclides are three times the MCL. That's not a milligram or a
microgram per liter over, that's three times the MCL. That's serious and one of the
serious -- I guess I will call it natural contaminants that we have is this plume of
radionuclides around the, you know, 300 foot level. Well, we looked at that as part of
this and there is 300 domestic wells that are drawing that same 90 microgram per liter
uranium water around Meridian Heights and now we know other places around the city.
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So, I think there is going to be an obligation on the city's part, but certainly on DEQ's
part if they regulate the public health by municipal water supply and it comes to the fore
that there is maybe, you know, several thousand residents, because they don't test
those wells for radionuclides. They don't know what they are drinking. Their kids are
drinking that water, they don't know. And when that happens the first thing that's going
to happen is the drillers are going to want to drill deeper and so are other people, but all
that's going to do is just bring that contamination down with it, so -- by the way, another
-- as Kyle mentioned that the department's been working with us and coming up with
some ideas and I think some creative ideas. Well, one of them was that they thought --
their feeling was that if we ask for the area of drilling concern and these specific type of
wells that the city drills and seals to only apply to wells drilled below 200 feet, they
thought that would be a much easier sell, because you could still allow the drill and drive
-- 90 percent of the well drillers to drill wells, because, you know, water -- waters are
shallow in Meridian so you won't really have to go very deep to get them. The other
thought they had is that, well, maybe that would actually keep the domestic wells out of
the radionuclide layer, which I think to a large extent is true, and in our proposal to them
we didn't put that in, because we thought we would also let them leave that in there as
an option that they might suggest or compromise that we could use in the deal.
Bird: The only thing is we got to -- as a city we need to make sure we look out for our
ratepayers, you knovv, we don't want to get ourselves to the point where we are paying
so much for water, but by the same token we want good water. What are we doing
now, Kyle, seven, eight hundred feet for our wells?
Radek: Councilman Bird, we do have wells anywhere from -- we have three shallow
wells, but our last --
Bird: The early ones, yeah.
Radek: Yeah. But our last ones we drilled have been between six and eight hundred
feet. So, you know, they are down there. I guess I would qualify one of the statements
Ed made, too, is that 90 micrograms per liter, that's three times the maximum
contaminant level figure for uranium that the EPA sets, so --
Bird: You know, the sad part of it is a lot of these private wells out here are never tested
and that's said.
Hoaglun: Well, actually, Councilman Bird, when we lived on a farm north of Meridian
here they were tested, because of the dairy cows, they had to drink clean water, so if
they were drinking clean water we were drinking clean water, so -- didn't test if for
human consumption, but the cows we had to -- had to test, so it worked out. I think, Ed,
you have given us some things to think about here. That option here you just
mentioned about drill and drive to 200 feet, I mean there is some cost mitigation there if
you can do that. I am concerned about our aquifer protection and -- for our residents in
Meridian and we know that water flows, so, you know, I'm looking at the big picture, but
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also that political picture and the things that you said are true and accurate and you
have seen it over the years how those fights have taken place in the legislature and --
Squires: Mr. President, there is no one that wants to have the scientific boundary more
than me, but I want to accomplish what the city needs and there is absolutely a huge
accomplishment if we are able to get the area of impact covered. And, then, I think you
can spearhead from there. One scenario would be you file for the area of impact, you
are able to achieve it, we work through the mechanics and -- but it's administered -- and
I think this is perhaps the way it will go and I think this is the way that it is best to go -- is
that we allow the Department of Water Resources -- there is actually a precedent for
this that I did not mention in northern Idaho where they just administered it as an area of
drilling concern, but there is no formal declaration, so it doesn't have to be -- the
outreach becomes pretty minimal and, sure, we have to talk to our neighbors and this
and that. We have to brief the department, because that's where everyone is going to
the governor's office and, then, they are going to come down to them and they need to
have the answers. But if they administer it like that, well, then, that gives us a double
pronged opportunity to come in and go to the next step if it doesn't work. We get to the
mechanics and we go, well, wait a second, we want this to be a formal declaration. We
don't want it to be just something that's a de facto. And at the same time we say -- and
we think the area should be bigger, so we make another formal application.
Hoaglun: I think that's a wise path to take.
Bird: Yeah. I think it's pretty wise.
Hoaglun: Councilman Zaremba, did you have a comment, question?
Zaremba: Well, I certainly agree with the goal and I think we are all assuming that the
real goal is to protect the whole source area, but the question is the method of how to
get there and I think you have made some very good suggestions that are possible. It
actually doesn't do any good to only project part of the source area. Whatever we do if
we do it in phases or do it in stages I think we need to keep this going until we do get
the whole scientific boundary, but I could be supportive of getting our foot in the door
first and, then, seeing where we need to go from there. At least we are taking some
action, we are getting it going, other people can see that it didn't end the world and,
then, we don't stop there, we -- we keep moving to get the whole area. If the
Department of Water Resources automatically makes it the whole area, then, that's fine,
too. I mean I'm sure they will understand the science to that, you know, so I could
support that.
Hoaglun: Go ahead.
Squires: Council President, Councilman Zaremba, I think it's kind of ironic that the
scientific boundary causes a lot of political problems, but the political boundary doesn't
cause any, so --
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Zaremba: Yeah.
Hoaglun: Yeah. Your Council liaison is Councilman Charlie Rountree and with his
background and knowledge of state government and experience around the legislature I
think as you move forward with this he could be very helpful in looking at some steps
and doing some things that would be helpful, but I'm -- after hearing Ed's explanation
and my background understanding what he's saying, I think number two does -- does
make more sense. I'd rather have number one, but I think we better be very careful as
we move this thing forward, because we don't want it to blow up, we have got to do
what we can and, then, keep -- keep educating. I don't want the education to our
neighbors to stop. That doesn't mean we can't have them move forward on some
fronts, but we have to be very judicious in those steps in how we -- how we approach
things to make this work, at least get something going and maybe have someone else
fight our battles, so --
Radek: Mr. President, Council Members, I'm hearing a consensus I believe that you
guys think we should move forward with the area -- area of impact and, then, work --
work toward --
Bird: I got one question, Kyle. You and the staff, what do you think of Ed's idea of 200?
Radek: Oh. That was -- Councilman Bird, we did discuss that in the -- in our previous
meeting and, then, we are -- we actually had that in the application already --
Bird: Okay. Okay.
Radek: And decided to pull it out so we could fall back on it.
Bird: No, I think that's a great idea to do with the 200, fall back, if you guys feel
comfortable. I'm like David and Brad, to go ahead and let's get her going.
Stewart: Councilman President, Councilman Bird, I want to make sure -- I think I heard
both of you talking about the same thing, but maybe two different solutions there. What
we have decided -- there is a proposal that we have decided is that we are going to ask
for the entire zone. In other words, we are not going to -- in our application to the Idaho
Department of Water Resources we are going to say we want the entire -- every well
sealed for the full length of the -- of the well, with the ability to fall back as a compromise
position to the 200 foot and not put it in the initial application. We are okay with that, but
we feel like that gives us the ability to compromise and gives us the ability to fall back to
that position. If I understood you right, Councilman Bird, you are kind of saying that
maybe that fallback position is what we ought to start out with. I just want to clarify.
Bird: I thought that's what we -- they had said they were going -- they wanted to go to,
Warren, and I might have misunderstood.
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Stewart: Okay. I just want to make sure that we are all on the same page here, so
maybe Kyle can clarify.
Radek: Yeah. I think I only got one note, you back me up here, but, Councilman Bird,
yes, that's -- we were saying that we had talked about it and considered it and even had
it in the application, but we pulled it out. So our intent right now was to move forward
without it --
Bird: Oh. Okay.
Radek: -- in the application, but if -- if Council thinks it's a better idea to put that 200 foot
limitation in there to start with then --
Bird: I just misunderstood.
Hoaglun: Kyle, what I -- and I want to make sure everyone understands that we are all
on the same page, that we are discussing the Public Works Department to go to the
Department of Water Resources with number two only in our area of impact.
Bird: Yeah.
Hoaglun: And consider expanding later. But, however, still talking to our neighbors and
-- I mean we do have to -- Ada County is in our area of impact, so we have got that.
( think the Boise Water or --
Bird: United Water.
Hoaglun: -- United Water is in there.
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Hoaglun: Councilman Zaremba.
Zaremba: Even though I support taking this as an initial step, somebody mentioned that
the documentation that goes along with that would show the whole scientific area and
hope they pick up on it, so I'm -- I'm not giving up on acting like we want the -- the whole
area, but we are just --
Radek: Exactly.
Zaremba: -- the actual application is for the area of impact.
Squires: Mr. President?
Hoaglun: Thank you, Councilman Zaremba. Ed, comments?
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Squires: Yes. I think that's exactly right. That's certainly where we want to go.
Zaremba: Yeah.
Squires: We don't want to forget that. We just want to do it in baby steps in hopes of
more success.
Zaremba: And so the documentation, though, would show the whole area --
Squires: And, in fact, we know, as Kyle already mentioned, that IDWR already wants to
take the hydro boundary, but if they can champion that cause, as the president
mentioned, so much the better. Just let them. If they can do that and, then, it's not like
we are out there trying -- perceived -- I'm not saying that we are doing it, but we are out
there as perceived as trying to foist our ideas on other jurisdictions. The people are
very indignant about that. So, if the department just says, hey, you know, they brought
this to our attention we have to act on it, I think we have a very compelling story, by the
way, then, they are going to say it's got to be here.
Zaremba: Cool. Thank you.
Hoaglun: Kyle, any questions, follow up, you or Warren, and,. the .road we.are .going?
Radek: If I understand, Mr. President, Council Members, We are getting guidance to
move forward with the area of joint concern as the area of impact and outreach to
stakeholders and apply to the Department of Water Resources as such and right now
we are not going to put the 200 foot limitation in the application, but we -- that's
something we can fall back on.
Bird: Yeah.
Hoaglun: Yes.
Radek: I appreciate your time and discussion very much.
C. Information Services/Police ®epartment: Update on Network
Connectivity Between City Hall and the Police ®epartment
Hoaglun: Thank you, Kyle, Ed, very much. Appreciate it. Thank you, Warren. Last but
not least, information services Police Department, update on network connectivity
between City Hall and the police department. Lieutenant Leslie, is that you? Is that
David? Is he going to back you up? What's the -- oh. Jaycee. Okay.
Holman: This is just a brief update to Council. I don't even know if everyone knows that
we briefly, depending on your definition of that, lost connectivity from City Hall to the
Police Department last week. I just wanted to give you a quick update how we handled
it in case you get any questions. This occurred as a result of us losing our fiber
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connection to the police station, because of Meridian Split Corridor Two. Before the
fiber went down we tested this several times according to David, took us off fiber and
did it through -- basically the wireless. Wireless goes from City Hall to the water tower,
water tower to PD. Everything went fine. We actually cut over -- we lost our fiber
connection -- let me look here -- on December 3rd. Didn't start noticing any minor
problems for a couple of weeks. IT noticed a couple of issues, calls cutting out, things
like that, but nothing major. And, then, it looks like -- let me see -- that was on -- fiber
went down on December 3rd, IT noticed a few calls cutting out when talking to PD on
December 17th. The PD personnel reported calls cutting out about December 26th and
as David labeled it D-Day, started on January 2nd. The problems progressed from
having issues to the network completely being down at PD. They were dealing with it
trying to figure out what the issues were. On January 3rd, which was -- we had been
out most of the day on the 2nd and on January 3rd we were still down, so at that time
Lieutenant Leslie came over and we put together a plan to move some of the PD
operation -- or at least two records clerks over from the police department to -- into the
city clerk's office, actually and we had them -- we rerouted the phones, so anything that
rang over at the police department, if they called any of the numbers over there it rang
to the city clerk's office. We worked with Natalie Podgorski to get information out via our
website, Facebook, Twitter, every way that we could. It was actually very very minimal.
I think most people probably didn't even know there was an issue. I just wanted to
provide an update to Council on that and we actually had an opportunity to implement a
little bit of some of the CUPS planning that we did and I'll let Lieutenant Leslie give you
an update there.
Hoaglun: And, Jaycee, as he comes up, when that went down did we ever activate the
wireless or was it when it went to wireless that there was some minor problems?
Holman: No. Councilman Hoaglun, what happened before -- we knew the fiber was
going down with this project. We completely took our connection to PD off of the fiber
and did it over the wireless, had no problems.
Hoaglun: Okay.
Holman: And even that was through the testing process, which we did several times.
Once we actually lost the connection it was two weeks before we started having issues.
As far as the technical issues as to what possibly happened, I will let David answer any
questions you have there. But this is just kind of an update that it could have been a
bigger issue, but it actually really turned out well with the coordination between our two
departments and kind of had some -- was able to have an opportunity to actually put a
little bit of our CUPE into action, so --
Hoaglun: Okay. Lieutenant Leslie.
Leslie: Mr. President, Council, it was kind of a -- we had the CUPE process and we
went through that here awhile back and a lot of us didn't have a really good feel for that
when we got done, but I think what really happened during that COPE process is the
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i players in the room, Jaycee, myself, Dave, had the opportunity to sit down and talk
about some of those things. We always talk about preparing for tornados and
earthquakes and natural disasters and terrorists attacks that are going to take us out
and, really, it's the basic fundamentals of what we do that we need to worry about the
most and this is a good example of that. We lost telephone communications to the
police department. Everybody who called in was getting a number that they had dialed
the wrong number, please check your number. Quickly rectified that problem as soon
as we realized that our call over -- there is another part of the system that failed the
second day with the transfer. Our phone lines transfer from the Police Department we
will receive phone calls from 7:00 in the morning to 6:00 at night. After that all of our
phone calls are transferred to the Ada County Sheriff's Office and they handle all of
those call receptions for us. We realize on the 4th -- 3rd? 3rd that that call transfer had
failed as well. And so as soon as Dave and I realized that that part of the process had
failed now our phone calls were not being handled by anyone. And so what we were
able to do is within about 35 minutes I think we had everything -- not 911 phone calls,
obviously, but just --
Bird: No. That goes into Ada County.
Leslie: Even I believe our extensions to probation and parole, any of our direct lines is
getting the signal that you didn't have a phone. message. We come over here, about 30
minutes later we were up and running, we had already figured out a phone line here or
two phone lines dedicated in the clerk's office. It was an interesting exercise from the
police officers -- or from the police clerks perspective is we had to totally change how
we did business at the police department and shuffle our staff around. Jaycee had to
shuffle a few people around. I think Sheree Finch ended up moving somewhere else.
Holman: My office.
Leslie: Holly and Nancy had to learn how to take police calls, because sometimes
people call us -- there is something going on right now and so we had to teach them
how to transfer our calls to dispatch. And, then, our clerks had to learn how to transfer
calls that were coming into the clerk's office on passports and a lot of information we
knew nothing about and so it was very challenging in the very beginning, but it was
pretty interesting or pretty exciting for me to see the crews all work together and two
people -- two crews of people from different worlds got thrown together and was able to
overcome that -- not a sense of stress of nervousness or excitement, it was just they
worked really really well. IT did a very good job of getting everything back up and
running for us. IT has done a phenomenal job for us over the years. Last year the ITS
project, the east side project, they are saving us tons of man hours and time and our
dependency on technology is becoming more and more and more as society becomes
more and more dependent upon it. The redundancy we have between the two buildings
is a wireless redundancy, which we felt would work well. Obviously if we had a hard line
connect it would help us a lot better. We need to work through some other issues in
regards to if we could do that just the opposite, can we transfer the calls from the clerk's
office to the PD and we have been talking about those and having those discussions.
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 8, 2013
Page 60 of 62
The second side, although we thought was going to be terrible on us, was really a good
exercise for us to try out some of these dependencies we have and the phones are the
basic dependency we have and we have got to have those working properly.
Hoaglun: Councilman Bird.
Bird: Yeah. For all three of you, David, too. What -- what do we need to do to have all
these wants and needs? What needs to be done between IT, police, and -- to get it
done.
Leslie: Yeah. Dave has -- we have plans for that and answers for that. We have some
redundancy in the fiber that we need to inspect all of buildings and basically get into the
technical side of that. As a city wide issue we need to have all our buildings connected
by fiber, so that we -- if we have a cut it doesn't -- it doesn't take any of us down, it
would take two or three cuts in order for that to occur. Obviously, that's time and
money. And the wireless works for us, but the wireless is like any wireless device that
you have now, it's -- it's definitely going to have some issues.
Holman: And -- Councilman Hoaglun, Council Members, David explained to me how
fiber works. He dumbed it down for me. It's very basic, but it's avery -- it's an
interesting -- I might have him come.up and .explain that. We are .in our CUPS. plan the
majority of the items that we found that the city needed to prepare more for were IT
related issues. So, a redundant system in an emergency situation is extremely
important. So, that's what we are going to be working towards is kind of planning that
roadmap for the future and how we are going to get there, so fiber is very important, so
-- in normal situations fiber is what we connect to the PD from and the wireless is our
backup. Fiber is a bit more reliable.
Bird: How many buildings do we have connected now with the fiber? Come on up,
David. You're not going to get to sit there.
Holman: You sat through all the Public Works things for this.
Tiede: Councilman Bird. The -- we have currently 11 buildings that we can access
throughout the city. Those -- of those we have three that were connected via fiber.
They were Fire Station One, the Police Department, and City Hall. With the corridor
project all that was ripped up. When that project is complete they plan to put that back
in the ground, but that is ACHD fiber that they let us use if there is a problem with it or
they work on the road and they cut some things we are kind of at -- you know, when
they have time to fix it that's when they will take care of it then. We have seen in the
past where that becomes a major issue. It's not under contract. They, obviously, don't
provide fiber.
Hoaglun: Councilman Bird.
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 8, 2013
Page 61 of 62
Bird: Follow up to you, Dave -- for you, David. You and -- all three of you. Can you get
a plan together and present to us time, cost, to get this done and get it done right?
Because we need to be up to date and we can't be going down in any of our
departments. Our wastewater, police, fire, any of them and the fire we got five buildings
out there that we got to worry about there. So, as a councilman I would like to know
what kind of plan we got and what kind of dollars we are talking about, so we can get a
plan together and do it as fast as possible.
Tiede: Councilman Bird, we are in the process of going out to some of the providers in
the area to see what options are available and what they are willing to do from a cost
standpoint to make it affordable for us --
Bird: Good.
Tiede: -- because what we have just seen in the past is very high prices and we are
hoping that with some of the work that some of these providers have done in the area
that that will be reasonable for us that we plan on putting a plan together.
Bird: Do we have the technology in place to do it, David, or will we have to get some
new technology?
Tiede: We have over the last three years or so we have been going and upgrading a lot
of our network technology to the point where we can support this --
Bird: Good.
Tiede: -- moving forward. There will be some minor costs to make sure the hardware
can -- we get over that, but for the most part we are ready for it.
Bird: Great.
Hoaglun: David, if you could explain to me in simple terms, you know, when I hear the
term backup, okay, fiber went down, the wireless is the backup, so in my mind that's
saying, okay, everything will operate via wireless now. But what -- what transpired
there?
Tiede: Councilman Hoaglun, what happened was we did go through this testing, we
knew the fiber was going to go down, we were informed about that about a year and a
half ago. So, had designed the system so that it was seamlessly transferred over to the
wireless and we tested that multiple times. We actually pulled the plug on the fiber
literally and said, okay, they are down and the transmission was milliseconds, no
problems whatsoever. What happened here in this case and these are -- there is a
couple factors that we are kind of aware -- or not sure what transpired, but the main
thing that we are aware of is there was interference with the wireless signal, which
happens because wireless is not monitored, nothing, so when other people put up
wireless that causes interference and there is a certain amount of noise where there is
Meridian City Council Workshop
January 8, 2013
Page 62 of 62
tolerance for that to happen and once it gets above -- beyond that it ceases to function.
That is really what it came down to is there was interference once we carved down the
pipe that we were using and changed it to a different channel we didn't have those
problems. But, unfortunately, with the nature of wireless that is a battle that we are
constantly fighting, as you have seen many times.
Hoaglun: Yeah. Okay. Thank you, David. I understood that. Anything else,
Councilman Members? All right.
Bird: Great job, guys.
Item 8: Future Meeting Topics
Hoaglun: Appreciate it. Jaycee, thank you for letting us know what transpired and
where you guys are. We are to Agenda No. -- Item No. 8, Future Meeting Topics. Do
we have anything?
Bird: I have nothing.
Hoaglun: Do we have a motion to adjourn?
Bird: So moved.
Zaremba: Second.
Hoaglun: All those in favor say aye.
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Hoaglun: We are adjourned.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 6:22 P.M.
(AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS)
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Meridian City Council Meeting
DATE: January 8, 2013 ITEM NUMBER:
PROJECT NUMBER:
ITEM TITLE:
Approval of Zero Dollar "Data Transfer Agreement between Ada County dnd The City
of Meridian For Delivery of Certain County Computerized Data Elements" with Ada
County
MEETING NOTES
~/ APPROVED
Community Item/Presentations Presenter Contact Info./Notes
CLERKS OFFICE FINAL ACTION
DATE: E-MAILED TO
STAFF SENT TO
AGENCY SENT TO
APPLICANT NOTES INITIALS
Memo
To: Jaycee L. Holman, City Clerk,
From: Keith Watts, Purchasing Manager
CC: Jacy Jones, Karie Glenn
Date: 1/3/13
Re: January 8 City Council Meeting Agenda Item
The Purchasing Department respectfully requests that the following item be placed on the
January 8 City Council Consent Agenda for Council's consideration.
Approval of "Data Transfer Agreement Between Ada County and the City of Meridian
for Delivery of Certain County Computerized Data Elements".
Recommended Council Action: Approval of Zero Dollar Agreement
Thank you for your consideration.
• Page 1
;} {
AGREEMENT N0. /
DATA TRANSFER AGREEMENT BETWEEN
ADA COUNTY AND THE CITY OF MERIDIAN
FOR DELIVERY OF CERTAIN COUNTY COMPUTERIZED DATA ELEMENT~~-
~r ~ ~~
THIS AGREEMENT is entered into this ' da of fi ~ ~.~ ~~~~~~ ~(~ ~
y ~ , , by and
between Ada County, a duly formed and existing county pursuant to the laws and Constitution of
the State of Idaho (hereafter referred to as "County"), the Ada County Sheriffs Office
("ACSO"), the Ada County Clerk of Court ("Clerk") and the City of Meridian (hereafter referred
to as "Agency").
WITNESSETH
WHEREAS, Agency has a need to access and utilize certain data elements owned and
maintained by County; and
WHEREAS, County agrees to provide Agency with availability to and use of those
certain data elements that County, including the Clerk and the ALSO as custodians of the data
elements, has authorized;
NOW, THEREFORE, it is hereby expressly agreed between the parties as follows:
I. DEFINITIONS
T_ Definition
Agency Government entity that has entered into an agreement with County
and has received written authorization from County and
custodians(s) to receive transfer of certain County computerized
data elements
Authorized User Agency's users who have passed the background requirements of
their employing agency and who have authorization pursuant to
this Agreement to work with the transferred County data
DATA ~SFER AGREEMENT WITH THE CITY OF MERIDIAN FOR DELIVERY OF
CERTAIN COUNTY COMPUTERIZED DATA ELEMENTS - Pa e 1 of 7
n:litldata transfer agreement with meridian 2012.dac g
Unauthorized Access Access to County's electronic data by any unauthorized user
means by Agency, its agents, officers, or employees, or through the
use of Agency's password.
II. ACCESS AND LOGISTICS
A. County shall provide Agency with access to data file transfers for the County
electronic data sets as set forth in Exhibit A hereto. All data will be provided in an XML format
and transferred using File Transfer Protocol (FTP).
B. Agency will provide County with specific definitions of data elements requested.
Definitions must include the data element names, descriptions, and formats. Requests must be
reviewed and approved by a representative of County department that is the custodian of the
requested data.
Written requests regarding ACSO data sets should be directed to:
Ada County Sheriff s Office
Attention: Business Systems Specialist
7200 Barrister Dr.
Boise, Idaho 83704
Written requests regarding Clerk data sets should be directed to:
Ada County Clerk of Court
Attention: Phil McGrane, J.D., Chief Deputy Clerk of Court
200 W. Front Street
Boise, Idaho 83702
C. Agency. fully understands that County and the custodians of the electronic data
sets, including the Clerk and the ACSO, authorize the use of the aforementioned electronic data
sets solely to Authorized Users. Agency has no right to usage or right to continued usage.
D. County employees maintain County computer system purely for County purposes.
County does .not maintain said system for Agency, nor does it maintain staff to aid Agency.
DATA TRANSFER AGREEMENT WITH THE CITY OF MERIDIAN FOR DELIVERY OF
CERTAIN COUNTY COMPUTERIZED DATA ELEMENTS -Page 2 of 7
n:litldata transfer agreement with meridian 2012.doc
County simply provides access to certain County computerized data sets. Agency Authorized
Users must have an established Internet connection or other County authorized method of access.
E. If accessing County Network by utilizing Virtual Private Network (VPN)
services, tunnels must originate from static IP addresses. Dynamic addresses may cause service
outages, since Internet Service Providers will renew their IP address pool.
F. Agency agrees to pay all costs associated with being provided such availability
and Agency agrees not to utilize any of the information obtained from County to violate any
federal, state or local law, or to allow anyone else to violate any federal, state or local law.
III. SECURITY
A. It is the responsibility of Agency to ensure that unauthorized users are not allowed
access to County data. All of the terms and conditions of this Agreement are applicable to each
Authorized User employed by or associated with Agency.
B. County reserves the right to conduct an audit of Agency's accessing personnel
and to verify that Agency has conducted a background check of all Agency's users prior to
Agency user's access to County's information. If any of Agency's users have not had the
required background check, County may terminate .this Agreement in accordance with Section
N herein.
C. while working with County data, Agency users must not leave their computers
unattended. If an Agency user leaves the computer, the computer must be locked either via a
screensaver password or screen lock.
D. All computers, including personal computers, that are transferring or accessing
data from County system must use the .most up-to-date anti-virus software that is the industry
standard.
DATA TRANSFER AGREEMENT WITH THE CITY OF MERIDIAN FOR DELIVERY OF
CERTAIN COUNTY COMPUTERIZED DATA ELEMENTS -Page 3 of 7
n:litldata transfer agreement with meridian 2012.doc
E. All computers, including personal computers, which are accessing and using data
from County system, must be under the oversight and control of Agency. Agency agrees to
designate one Agency employee as the Security Supervisor for Agency who will exercise the
oversight and control. The Security Supervisor shall supervise staff, equipment, and operation of
the access to County system and the use of County data. The Security Supervisor shall be the
one point of contact for County regarding security issues.
IV. TERMINATION
A. County may immediately and permanently discontinue data transfer service to
Agency if any violations of this Agreement. occur.
B. Notwithstanding paragraph A above, County may permanently discontinue data
transfer service to Agency at any time and for any reason. If possible, County will give Agency
ten (l o) calendar days' written notice before discontinuing service.
C. County will not be responsible for any inconvenience, loss, or damage sustained
by Agency as a result of County's provision, discontinuance or .disruption of data transfer
services.
D. If Agency's data transfer service is discontinued for any reason, Agency must
again apply for service. County may deny Agency's application for any reason, including the
reason Agency was originally discontinued.
E. Agency may discontinue data transfer service at any time and for any reason, but
must provide County with written notice ten (l o) calendar days prior to discontinuation.
V. MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS
A. Agency shall bear sole responsibility for all costs related to the equipment owned
and used by Agency to access and transfer County's data, including purchase, maintenance, and
DATA TRANSFER AGREEMENT WITH THE CITY OF MERIDIAN FAR DELIVERY OF
CERTAIN COUNTY COMPUTERIZED DATA ELEMENTS -Page 4 of 7
n:iitldata transfer agreement with meridian 2012.doc
repair costs. County maintains its equipment for County purposes. County will not provide
computer expertise to aid Agency.
B. Agency bears .the sole responsibility for protecting against Unauthorized andlor
damaging access to County data by Agency. Agency is liable for any damage where access was
through Agency, its agents, officers, or employees, or through the use of the Agency's assword,
p
whether authorized or unauthorized. Agency shall bear all costs of restoring all damaged data to
its original state as well as any incidental andlor consequential damages or liabilities that mi ht
g
result directly or indirectly from such access.
C. Agency agrees that the use of the computer data covered by this Agreement is
limited to authorized Agency use and personnel. Agency agrees and understands that it is not
authorized and has no right or authority to distribute the computer data to other a encies•
g
personnel within Agency not covered by this Agreement, or any third parties.
D. Agency agrees to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless County, its officers,
agents, and employees from and against any and all liability, loss, damage, costs, and ex eases,
p
including legal expenses (providing and paying for counsel of Coun 's choice which ma
tY )~ Y
accrue or be sustained by County, its officers, agents, or em to ees as a result or copse u
p Y q ence,
whether direct or indirect, of any claims, suits, demands, actions, judgments, settlements or
forfeiture, including any suit instituted to enforce the obli ations of this a Bement of in emni
g ~' ~ tY~
made or brought by any party against County, its officers, agents, or employees, arisin out of or
g
in connection with this Agreement, or information or computer data intentionall or
Y
unintentionally accessed, utilized by or released by or through Agency.
DATA TRANSFER AGREEMENT wITH THE CITY OF MERIDIAN FOR DELIVERY OF
CERTAIN COUNTY COMPUTERIZED DATA ELEMENTS - Pa e 5 of 7
n:litldata transfer agreement with meridian 2012.doc g
E. County's decision to provide electronic data transfer is strictl ursuant '
y p to this
Agreement, and Agency agrees that transfer of County electronic data elements i
s not mandated
bylaw.
F. This Agreement is effective on October 1, 2012 and shall cont' '
~nue until
terminated by either Party, for any reason. Termination is effective u on written '
p notice by either
Party thirty (3 0) days prior to the effective termination
date. Should County, in its sole
discretion, choose to modify access to data file transfers set ' ' •
forth m Exhibit A hereto, it shall
send Agency written notice of said modifications an
() d a date certain when said modification(s)
shall become effective ("Modification of Exhibit A" .
Any such Modification of Exhibit A
created pursuant to this Paragra h F shall become art of •
p p this Agreement, as if set forth herein.
Written notices to Agency should be directed to:
City of Meridian
Attention: Jaycee Holman
Title: City Clerk
33 E. Broadway Ave.
Meridian, ID 83642
G. This Agreement shall be governed and interpreted in accordance with the la
ws of
the State of Idaho.
H. In the event of any litigation or any other legal dis ute arisin under or as a r
p g esult
of this Agreement between County and Agenc the revailin a '
Y~ p g p rtY shall recover its costs and
reasonable attorney fees.
I. In the event any provision or section of this Agreement conflicts with a licabl
pp e
law, or is otherwise held to be unenforceable, the remainin rovisions shall nev
g p ertheless be
enforceable and shall be carried into effect.
DATA TRANSFER AGREEMENT WITH THE CITY OF MERIDIAN FOR DEL
IVERY OF
CERTAIN COUNTY COMPUTERIZED DATA ELEMENTS - Pa e 6 of 7
n:litldata transfer agreement with meridian 201Z.doc g
J. This Agreement may be modified or amended only by a writing duly executed b
Y
both County and Agency.
K. This. Agreement embodies the whole agreement of County and A enc . There
g Y
are no promises, terms, conditions, or obligations other than those contained in this A reement.
g
All previous or contemporaneous communications, representations, or a reements either verbal
g
or written, between the parties are superseded by this Agreement.
IN WITNESS THEREOF, the parties have executed this Agreement on the date and
year wntten above.
ATTEST:
Board of Ada County Commissioners
By:
..
llssloner
By•
o missioner
B• '
Y•
Commissioner
Christopher D. Rich, Ada County Clerk
~- Phil McGrsnc~, Chief Deputy
DATA TRANSFER AGREEMENT WITH THE CITY OF MERIDIAN FOR DELIVERY OF
CERTAIN COUNTY COMPUTERIZED DATA ELEMENTS - Pa e 7 of 7
n:litldata transfer agreement with meridian 2012.doc g
Approved as to access to ACSO data sets:
Chief Deputy Ron Freeman
sy:
Gary Raney, Ada County Sheriff
Approved as to access to ISTARS data sets:
B~
Y•
Christo er D. Rich, Ada County Clerk of Court
City of Meridian
~ ,
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~.~~~' de We ayor --
0~~0 1, j
ATTEST: ~G 9°~
City of
E IIJIAN~
IDAHO
,~/~
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w
ti
'~r Q~ ~ ~
aycee an, City Clerk
R~(~be TREAS~~
DATA TRANSFER AGREEMENT WITH THE CITY OF MERIDIAN FOR DEL
CERTA VERY OF
IN COUNTY COMPUTERIZED DATA ELEMENTS - Pa e 8 of 7
n:litldata transfer agreement with meridian 2012.doc g
EXHIBIT A
CSV Text File Description /Selection
ISTARSCalendar.txt Calendar Info
ISTARSDispositions.txt Disposition Info
CSV Text File Description l Selection
JMS_Officer.CSV Relation (Officers Only: Ada, Boise, Garden City, Meridian)
JMS_SHFPBOK.CSV Booking details
JMS SHFPHLD.CSV Hold Info
JMS_SHFPJST.CSV Serving time
JMS_SHFPJVA.CSV Visual Arrest Info
JMS_SHFPJWR.CSV Warrant Info
Subj Association (NCO/PO Info) (NCO = No Contact Order; PRO =Protection Order; NCJ = ~
JMS_SHFPPAS.CSV Juvenile;
JMS SHFPPER.CSV Suspect/Notify person (Arrest and Victim Groups)
JMS_SHFPPSM.CSV Scars Marks Tattoos (Arrest Group)
JMS_SHFPRSC.CSV Registered Sex Offenders -Crimes (wl Description)
JMS_SHFPRSO.CSV Registered Sex Offenders
JMS_SHFPSTY.CSV Jail stay info (necessary to link to the four below)
CSV Text File Description
JMS_Officer.TXT Relation (Officers Only: Ada, Boise, Garden City, Meridian)
JMS_SHFPBOK.TXT Booking details
JMS_SHFPHLD.TXT Hold Info
JMS_SHFPJST.TXT Serving time
JMS_SHFPJVA.TXT Visual Arrest Info
JMS_SHFPJWR.TXT Warrant Info
Subj Association (NCO/PO Info) (NCO = No Contact Order; PRO =Protection Order;
JMS_SHFPPAS.TXT NCJ = No Contact Order -Juvenile;
JMS_SHFPPER.TXT SuspectlNotify person (Arrest and Victim Groups)
JMS_SHFPPSM.TXT Scars Marks Tattoos (Arrest Group)
JMS_SHFLRSC1.TXT * Registered Sex Offenders -Crimes (w /Description)
JMS_SHFPRSO.TXT Registered Sex Offenders
JMS_SHFPSTY.TXT Jail stay info (necessary to link to the four below)
EXHIBIT A -Page 1 of 1
n:litldata transfer agreement with meridian 2012.doc
Keith Watts
From: Kathy Wanner
Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2013 8:06 AM
To: Keith Watts
Subject: FW: Data Transfer Agreement
Here you go.
9Cathy "Wanner
Meridian City Finance Office
33 E. Broadway Ave., Ste 106
Meridian, ID 83642
Phone: (208)489-0416
Fax: (208) 887-4813
kwannerCcilmeridiancity. ora
From: Ted Baird
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2012 12:06 PM
To: Kathy Wanner; Keith Watts
Subject: RE: Data Transfer Agreement
It's fine. For Notices, please fill the blank to reflect the City Clerk. Thanks.
From: Kathy Wanner
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2012 10:26 AM
To: Ted Baird; Keith Watts
Subject: FW: Data Transfer Agreement
Ted,
Please review .... .
This agreement is for Police and MUBS uses it as well.
From: Karie Glenn
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2012 10:08 AM
To: Kathy Wanner
Subject: RE: Data Transfer Agreement
I would say yes -Ted should review, based on her email it sounds like there are some changes written within from
previous versions. While MUBS doesn't "transfer" data, nor are we looking for arrest information, we do use the vpn
access to validate information through dmv records.
.7Carie .~l GCenn
Utility Billing Manager
City of Meridian
33 E Broadway Ave. Ste. 106
Meridian ID 83642
(208)888-4439 Office
(208)489-0436 Direct
(208)887-4813 Fax
TCease teCCus (tow eve did www.meridiancity.org/forms.aspx?id=4010
From: Susan Sass [mailto:SUSANSCaladaweb.netl
Sent: Wednesday, October S0, 2012 9:57 AM
To: Kathy Wanner
Subject: Data Transfer Agreement
Hi Kathy:
Attached is our Data Transfer Agreement for retrieving data elements from the County's FTP site as listed in Exhibit A.
This year we are attempting a perpetual type contract that is modified by either side only when there is a change to the
data elements. In the event the County ever needed to modify the data elements our attorney has requested a formal
contact be provided on page 6 of the agreement.
If you or your attorney have any questions please let me know. Thank you!
ps, the Interface Agency Agreement is still to come.
~~ ~'~`
(i ~ .~_f!
Susan Sass
IT Office Administrator
Ada County Information Technology
200 W. Front St., Ste 3269, Boise, ID 83702
(208) 287-7020 mainJ/
(zo8) z87aos1 office
(208)287-7039 fax
Meridian City Council Meeting
DATE: January 8, 2013 ITEM NUMBER:
PROJECT NUMBER:
ITEM TITLE:
Senior Center Presentation
MEETING NOTES
~r9YG~7 ~ Y~ • y~u~ ~~~
Community Item/Presentations Presenter Contact Info./Notes
CLERKS OFF/CE F/NAL ACTION
DATE: E-MAILED TO
STAFF SENT TO
AGENCY SENT TO
APPLICANT NOTES INITIALS
Meridian City Council Meeting
DATE: January 8, 2013 ITEM NUMBER:
PROJECT NUMBER:
ITEM TITLE:
Items Moved From Consent Agenda
MEETING NOTES
~-
Community Item/Presentations Presenter Contact Info./Notes
CLERKS OFFICE FINAL ACTION
DATE: E-MAILED TO
STAFF SENT TO
AGENCY SENT TO
APPLICANT NOTES INITIALS
Meridian City Council Meeting
DATE: January 8, 2013 ITEM NUMBER: 7q
PROJECT NUMBER:
ITEM TITLE:
City Council Department Liaison Appointments
MEETING NOTES
Community Item/Presentations Presenter Contact Info./Notes
CLERKS OFFICE FINAL ACTION
DATE: E-MAILED TO
STAFF SENT TO
AGENCY SENT TO
APPLICANT NOTES INITIALS
~~
R~~ErVE~
JAN 0 8 2013
2013 Council Liaisons to Departments CITYOFGCfs muN
CITyCLERKSOF~ E
Community Development (P&Z, Building Services & Ec Dev.) -Keith
Finance/MUBS & LegaUHR -David
Fire -Brad
Mayor & Information Services (City Clerlc/IT) -Brad
Parks & Rec -David
Police -Keith
Public Works (All) -Charlie
Meridian City Council Meeting
DATE: January 8, 2013 ITEM NUMBER: 7g
PROJECT NUMBER:
ITEM TITLE:
Legal/H R: Strategic Plan Update
MEETING NOTES
Community Item/Presentations Presenter Contact Info.INotes
CLERKS OFFICE FINAL ACTION
DATE: E-MAILED TO
STAFF SENT TO
AGENCY SENT TO
APPLICANT NOTES INITIALS
(~E IDIAN~- ~~ ~~
~eA>i~ ~ECEIVE~
Human Resources Roles and Responsibiliti
Administrative Assistant I .IANp~0.,p8~ ~Ol~
Primarily responsible for providing a wide array of administrative functions and as we as rou~tile olart ID ~N
work. Assists one or more individuals with various deparhnental functions, including ~~ec{S.LCAI~~~~ICE
duties include acting as a contact point for employees, citizens and others. Processes purchase orders,
maintains department file systems, performs research, correspondence, public relations and other duties, as
assigned. This class of employee is afforded discretion and works under general supervision.
Primary Duties and Responsibilities:
General Administrative
Responds accurately to a variety of employee requests
Answers telephone calls and greets customers
Takes messages
Transfer calls
Advise staff of customer(s) needing assistance
Maintains, sorts, organizes, and files department paperwork
Compose letters, correspondence, andmemos
Schedule and coordinate arrangements for meetings and conferences
Answers employee and management questions
Inventories, orders, and receives supplies
Collects and delivers mail
Process annual inventory check
Ensures compliance of Records Retention (Legal and HR)
Maintains department Intranet page
General Legal Functions
Bankruptcy
Scan filings into electronic bankruptcy database
Create, maintain and close bankruptcy files
Ensures electronic bankruptcy database is updated
Assists with various bankruptcy filings
Board of Adjustment
Compiles Board of Adjustment Appeals
General HR Functions
Ensures personnel files are updated and maintained
Files paperwork
Audits accuracy of employee information entered into I3R database
W-4's
Direct Deposit
PAR Forms (monetary)
401K / PERSI Choice
State 457
Valic
Submits audited reports as requested to Management for review
Updates and maintains City Organizational Charts
Administers City Random Drug Test Program
Process requests for drug tests
Communicate results of drug tests
Communicate results ofpre-employment background check
Process fmgerprint results
Roles and Responsibilifies-Administrative Assistant I/7/13
General HR Functions continued
Longevity /Service Awards Program
Inventory and orders supplies (ie. certificate paper. certificate covers, plaques)
Inventory and order service gifts
Maintains list of Employee Service Dates and record of gift distribution
Ensures accurate and timely certificate preparation
Processes employee notifications
Process and replace employee, contractor and temporary badges
Process and hack Affirmative Action
Updates and maintains Compliance Manuals
Process and Maintains Training Program Database
Course information
Employee registration
Employee transcripts
Employee registration
Process paining certificates of complefion
Assist with training classroom prepazation and cleanup
Orders, and receives training supplies
IT Support
Ensures purchasing by following value pricing practices
Processes invoices and coordinates purchasing for IT Department
Inventories, orders, and receives supplies
Record keeping for City Softwaze Maintenance
Arts Commission
Serves as liaison to the Art Commissioners
Coordinate meeting logistics
date, time, location, etc.
Coordinates public notice and meeting minutes
Prepares and distributes Arts Commission Agendas
Prepares and distributes Arts Commission Meeting Packets
Maintain record of Commission activities
Process Arts Commission payment requests
Assists with various Arts Commission activities
Reporting
Prepares data and reports on a variety of HR programs as assigned
Projects
Handles projects as assigned
Roles and Responsibilities -Administrative Assistant I/7/13
~~E IDIAN>~
I D rt H O Human Resources Roles and Responsibilities
Benefits Support Coordinator
Performs a variety of benefit administration duties as well as a wide array of administrative functions and
clerical work for the Human Resources Department. An employee in this class is responsible for assisting
in the administration of employee benefits, personnel processes, and the inputting of data into information
systems. Assists one or more individuals with various departmental functions, maintains department files,
performs research, correspondence, public relations, and other duties as assigned. This individual will
serve as a contact point for employees, citizens and others.
Primary Duties and Responsibilities:
General Benefits Administration
Conducts New Hire Orientation: Benefit selection and enrollment
Answers employee questions regarding benefit programs and eligibility
Processes all paperwork to benefit carriers
Creates and maintains benefit files
Updates the Summary of Benefits
Research and documents timelines of events in situations where there is a question as to employee
availability of benefits
Processes employee requests for changes relating to:
Life Insurance
Health Insurance
Beneficiaries
Dependent status
Short Term Disability
Long Term Disability
Updates employee Benefit changes into HR database including:
New Benefits
Adding/removingdependants
Increase/Cancellation in coverage
Beneficiary Changes
Ensures compliance with applicable statutes, regulations, and union contracts
Participates in Benefit Meetings
Responds accurately to a vaziety of employee requests regarding:
Benefit coverage
Eligibility
Qualifying events
Insurance changes
Works with employees and benefit vendors to solve problems
Acts as liaison between external agencies and employees, such as benefit providers
Annual Open Enrollment
Annual enrolhnent process to include:
Coordination and communication of meetings
Development of information materials
Prepazes enrollment packets and Benefit summaries
Consults with Mercer regarding participation, benefits offerings, and questions
Prepares annual compliance notice
Process Enrollment forms
Update Employee Summary Statement
Accurately enters information into ABRA
Roles and Responsibilities -Benefits Support Coordinator Ol /7/13
Annual Open Enrollment Continued:
Conducts open enrolhnent meetings
Maintain records of meeting attendance
Answers employee questions regarding benefit programs and eligibility
Maintain signed copies of employee annual benefit summaries
Works with employees to solve problems
Wellness
Organizes and Participates in Wellness Meetings
Consults and communicates with wellness service providers
Coordinates implementation of wellness programs and events
Communicates upcoming wellness services
Tracks participation in program
Tracks monthly logs and points attained
Answers employee questions regarding program
Process employee payment for wellness services
Verify wellness service invoices and forwards to Michelle Albertson for processing
Works with employees to solve problems
Tracks employee use of incentive
PERSI
Processes PERSI employee separation forms
Processes PERSI new hve documents including certifications of Firefighter/Police
Processes PERSI seasonal employment status forms
Answers employee and management questions regarding program
Ensures compliance with applicable statutes and regulations
Works with employees to solve problems
COBRA
Processes COBRA employee separation forms
Processes initial COBRA documents for new hires
Answers employee and management questions7egarding program
Ensures compliance with applicable statutes and regulations
Works with employees to solve problems
Tracks COBRA elections
Processes COBRA payments to Finance
General HR Functions
Creates and maintains personnel files and HR files
Ensures personnel and HR files are updated and maintained
Files paperwork
Processes employment verification of City employees
Processes employee status changes (PAR forms)
New hires and re-hires
Employee salary and classification changes
Employee changes, transfers, and supervisor changes
Leave of Absence
Separations
Ensures accuracy of employee information entered into HR database
Process W-4's
Process I-9's
Process Deductions
401K /PERSI Choice
State 457
Valic
Rotes and Responsibilities -Benefits Support Coordinator 01/7/13
General HR Functions
Process name changes
Process emergency contact forms
Process address changes
Process direct deposit requests
Process annual increase
Process performance reviews
Prepare annual service awards
Process and replace employee, contractor and temporary badges
Issues employee and visitor parking passes
Updates Intranet with Benefit, Wellness, and HR information
Processes request of computer access to IT for new employees, contractors, and volunteers
Review of timecards for use of sick/vacation/unpaid leave to insure compliant with City Policy
FMLA
Administers FMLA program and ensures FMLA notification and compliance
Counsel employee and management regarding program
Processes and reviews FMLA applications and advises employee of eligibility
Enter and maintains active claims in HR database (FMLA Tracking software)
Track available hours and hours used
Ensures compliance with applicable statutes and regulations
Help employees to submit ShortlLong Term Disability paperwork
Track all Short and Long Term Disability Claims
Approval
Dates
Amounts Paid
Reporting
Prepares data and reports on a variety of HR programs as assigned
Projects.
Handles projects as assigned
Roles and Responsibilities-Benefits Support Coordinator Ol/7/13
(~E IDR IAN,'--
i o a u o Human Resources Roles and Responsibilities
Human Resources Generalist
This entry level position performs a variety of technical and administrative duties in the Human Resource
area to include recruitment/selection processes and procedures assist with job classification analysis and
compensation. The work is performed under the general supervision of the Human Resources Manager, but
the individual exercises independent initiative and judgment in planning, resolving routine and unusual
problems and organizing work. Decisions that will effect major change or deal with complex or unique
issues are reviewed by the Human Resource Director.
Primary Duties and Responsibilities:
Recruiting: General Employees Positions
Draftjob announcements /advertisements
Review Staffing Requisitions
Review job descriptions for open position
Posts job openings on City Website and Intranet
Coordinates posting ofjob announcement with advertising agencies
Forward advertising invoices for Processing
Reviews job applications
Prepares and delivers applications to huing manager
Coordinate interview activities
Review and finalize interview questions
Prepare interview packets
Conduct interviews with dept representatives
Counsel hiring teams regarding hiring practices and selection processes
Process no thank you's notifications to non selected applicants
Maintains accurate candidate applications status in application database
Compose jobbffer letter
Extends offers of employment
Process employment verifications
Process reference checks
Conduct pre-employment
Fingerprints
Badges
Drug and alcohol testing
Review and obtain signature ofjob description
Finalizes employmenUemployee file paperwork and forward for processing
Job offer letter
Completed references
Copy of signedjob description
Copy of employment application, cover letter, resume
Ensures recruiting files aze updated and maintained
Workers Compensation
Receives and reviews department first accident injury report
Processes and submits first accident injury report to State Insurance Fund
Consults with State Insurance fund regarding claims and questions
Communicates with deparhnenU employees manager regarding claim status
Ensures collection of required paperwork and documentation
Consults with employee(s) regarding claim and questions
Ensures Workers Compensation files are updated and maintained
Roles and Responsibilities (Primary)- HR Generalist 1/8/13
Unemployment Claims
Reviews unemployment claim for accuracy and files all paperwork
Reviews quarterly statement form Department of Labor for accuracy and forwards for approval
Consults with Department of Labor regarding claims and questions
Communicates with Department regarding claims
Ensures collection of required paperwork and documentation
Ensures required information meets required timelines
Education Reimbursement Program
Reviews and processes requests for reimbursement
Communicates with employees regarding program guidelines and questions
Reporting
Prepares data and reports on a variety of HR programs as assigned
Workers Compensation Quarterly and fiscal year end reports
Assists with Compensation Surveys
Assists with development and reporting of the City Annual Survey
Assists with the development of EEOC reports
Review issues related to HR matters as assigned
Human Resources Training
Maintain records of class attendance
Deliver training courses as assigned
Deliver New Hire Orientation
Prepare policy manual CD's
Reserves conference rooms for orientation meetings
Sends meeting invites/notices to employee and/or supervisor
Assists with classroom training setup and clean up
Updates and maintains registration website
Employee Relations
Counsels general employees regarding questions or concerns
Projects
Handles projects as assigned
Roles and Responsibilities (Primary)-HR Generalist 1/8/13
~~E IDIAN~-
i o n N o Human Resources Roles and Responsibilities
Human Resource Manager
Provides management direction, support, leadership and training on the functions of the Human Resources
division. The incumbent is responsible for providing support to City departments in matters related to
personnel policies; provide employment program support to include recruitment, selection, appointment,
orientation, evaluation and termination. The principal function of an employee in this class is to manage the
overall functions of the Human Resource Department reporting to the Director of Human Resources.
Primary Duties and Responsibilities:
Staff Management:
Manage, organize, and direct activities of HR Staff
Coach and counsel staff regarding per job duties and performance
Delegate and distribute department tasks /functions
Evaluate performance
Conduct performance reviews
Ensures employee file maintenance and that updates are properly completed by staff
Assists HR Director in the preparation of compensation program recommendations
Assists HR Director in the preparation of performance review program recommendations
Recruiting: General Employees Positions
Draft job announcements /advertisements notifications
Review Staffmg Requisitions
Review job descriptions for open position
Oversee posting of job openings on City Website and Intranet
Oversees posting of job announcement with advertising agencies
Forward advertising invoices for Processing
Reviews joh applications
Prepares and delivers applications to hiring manager
Coordinate interview activities
Review and fmalize interview questions
Prepare interview packets
Conduct interviews with department representatives
Counsel hiring teams regarding hiring practices and selection processes
Process no thank you notifications to non selected applicants
Maintains accurate candidate applications status in application database
Compose job offer letter
Extends offers of employment
Process employment verifications
Process reference checks
Oversee pre-employment duties
Fingerprints
Badges
Drug and alcohol testing
Review and obtain signature of job description
Finalizes employment/employee file paperwork and forward for processing
Job offer letter
Completed references
Copy of signed job description
Copy of employment application, cover letter, resume
Ensures recruiting files are updated and maintained
Roles and Responsibilities-Humatr Resources Manager 1/8/13
Workers Compensation
Oversees program
Receives department fast accident injury report (secondary)
Reviews and approves department first accident injury report
Processes and submits fast accident injury report to State Insurance Fund (secondary)
Consults with State Insurance fund regarding claims and questions
Communicates with department/ employees manager regarding claim status (secondary)
Consults with employee(s) regarding claim and questions (secondary)
Reviews quarterly and fiscal year end reports and distributes
Meets with provider representative to discuss service needs, program, and annual report
Unemployment Claims
Oversees program
Reviews and approves quarterly statement form Department of Labor for accuracy
Consults with Department of Labor regarding claims and questions (secondary)
Communicates with Department regarding claims (secondary)
Oversees the collection of required paperwork and documentation
Coordinates appeal response documentation
Attends /represents COM at Unemployment Hearings
Education Reimbursement Program
Oversees program
Approves requests for reimbursement
Answers employee questions regarding program
Ensures compliance with City Policy
Employee Assistance Program:
Administers program
Guides and support HR staff with questions
Answers employee questions regarding program
Drug Testing Program
Oversees Program
Guides and support HR staff with questions
Ensures compliance with the City's program
Reporting
Prepares data and reports on a variety of HR programs as assigned
Workers Compensation Quarterly and fiscal year end reports
Compensation Surveys
Benefit Surveys
Development and reporting of the City Annual Survey
Oversee and approves EEOC reports
Vacancy Reports
Review issues related to HR matters as assigned
Human Resources Training
Manage and administers B.E.S.T Employee Development Program
Maintain records of class attendance
Deliver training courses as assigned
Deliver New Hire Orientation (secondary)
Prepare policy manual CD's
Reserves conference rooms for orientation meetings
Sends meeting invites/notices to employee and/or supervisor
Classroom training set up and cleanup
Rotes and Responsibilities-Human Resources Manager 1/8/13
Oversees the updates and maintenance ofregistration website
Approves course completion certificates
Processes Request for Course Credit Requests
Reviews, develops and approves course curriculum
Updates and maintains Training Budget
Schedules training courses
Locates and coordinates training efforts with consultant or assigned training
Assigns training courses for delivery
Assists department(s) with training needs and coordinates training efforts
Employee Relations
Counsels /advise general employees, supervisors and managers /leadership regarding questions
or concerns
Reviews and approves levels of progressive discipline
Coach /advise supervisors and managers /leadership thru discipline process
Assists in the development of and approves disciplinary paperwork
Conduct exit interviews
Process exit interview paperwork
Assists department directors in recruitment, transfers, promotions and termination of personnel
Conducts employee separation / terminations
Investigates employee, discrimination, and harassment complaints
Conducts Job Satisfaction Surveys
Assists managers /supervisors with preparation of employee performance evaluations
Attend director meetings at Director request
City Policies
Assists in the development or updating of policies
Communicates new and or updated policies to employees
Answer employee questions and interpret policies
Advise management of changes to internal policies and procedures
General Benefits Administration
Oversees program
Answers employee questions regarding benefit programs and eligibility
Assists HR Director to and benefit providers regarding program
Annual Open Enrollment _
Oversees annual event
Coordinates and approves meeting schedule
Reviews and approves PowerPoint presentation
Prepares emollment packets and Benefit summaries
Consults with Mercer regarding participation, benefits offerings, and questions
Attends and or conducts (if needed) open enrollment meetings
Maintain records of meeting attendance
Answers employee questions regarding benefit programs and eligibility
Maintain signed copies of employee annual benefit summaries
Works with employees to solve problems and answer questions
FMLA
Projects
Oversees the administration of the FMLA Program
Counsels employees and management regarding the program
Handles projects as assigned
Roles and Responsibilities-Human Resources Manager 1/8/13
~ ~ ~~
1/8/2013
~ECE~~rED
JA~J d ~ ~o'~
"Partners at Work"
Human Resources
~.~..
..
CITY OFC~C~~~,w~-
CITYCLERKS OFFICE
Organizational Structure
1/8/2013
~E~ Human Resources
ro,an.v neap.wis.
a,®. yr
~a"a"~re Recruiting:
• 4,280+ applications received and processed for 39
job postings
• 266+ hours of interviews
• 90 days (average) to fill vacant position
mamw r~ere...,..mrm.e.r,.m.:
N
t
Atltl
i
S
l E
l
ex
up:
ress
ng
easona
mp
oyment
Human Resources
B.E.S.T. Employee Development Program:
The City of Meridian believes strongly that the success of the
organization tlepends on its talented and valued employees
and their abilitylo achieve the goals of the organization. They
make a dgference. Organizations who provide personal and
professional development lead the way. The Cdy of Meridian
has designed a program to support the developmenlof all
employees-to grow, motivate and retain.
The program is designed to provide real-world information /J`/
thalamployees can apply baGcin theworkplace o
Human Resources
B.E.S.T. Employee Development Program:
• EDP Program Overview
• Respectful Workplace Scoarses totaling:
• Performance Managementfw 47 sessions
Employees qqg participants
• Pedormance Management for 9821raining hours
SupervisorlLeatlemhip
• Conducting Effective Pedormance
Reviews
• Ethics
NeXt lip: Continue to Rollout Training Offedngs ni
2
1 /8/2013
Human Resources
B.E.S.T. Employee Development Program:
2073 Proposed Training Schedule • Tentative
Note' Cowles in boltl letl ere new au,ua
Human Resources
Youth-Work-Life Skills Program:
• 32 applications received and processed
• 30 interviews conducted; 21 participated
• 2,528 h0UfS WOfked (7,006.5 more hours than 2011)
• $18,960 COSt ('under budget)
• 6 departments and several divisions
utilized interns
:.'
Human Resources
Youth-Work-Life Skills 2012 Program
Enhancements:
• Point of Contact Odenlalion
• Interview Feedback I Coaching Sessions
• Pertormance Feedback Form
• Bi-weekly Work Schedules
• Program DebrieF/Wrap Up Meeting
3
1/8/2013
Human Resources
Youth-Work-Life Skills 2013 Program
Enhancements:
• Resume Development /Updating
• Point of Conlacl Program Debrief
Human Resources
Performance Review Evaluation Form:
Employee Survey Feedback
- No feeling of ownership - Confusing, hard to link le
-Lack understanding of why mulgple manlms of Meddlan
process is necessary Way, Meddian First, Slx Month
- Seen as an exercise that Review, Work Plan, Strategic
Calegodes, etc.
promotes lengthy vrtillen
essays -Lack of underslantling process
- Taol Is poorty fonnatled requirements
end hartl to use -Lack of training on tool, on
process, on desired oulwmes
Many padiclpanls expressed a moderate to high
tlagree of tlls~satis/aetionwith PAD
Human Resources
Performance Review Evaluation Tool:
Whaf Employees Want in New Tool
- Fonnattetl & easy to use, - Suppodetl by classroom and
intuitive online (reining antl help
- TmineQ understood, -Allows far department Flexibility
supported and followetl Iwnn rerfew aaa ayp~avalmaa m.
Through by all levels of Ne employmmuaw compfanca)
organization lop to bogom. - Supports a reasonable
- Serves an explainable and preparation gme on a per
untlersWndable pugrose to employee basis
the employee and far the - Is easy to use
organization
~+
4
1/8/2013
Human Resources
Performance Review Evaluation Tool:
What Dltl We Do7
~ im
Fom
`m`~w`r
m..ao..
m `-
~
FnW
t Potm
~FCall~etl^
~~,~~
Human Resources
Pertormance Review Evaluation Tool:
• Implemented new form for FY12 Annual Performance
Reviews
• Training Conducted:
- Pedormance Management Overview
- Pertormance Management Overviewfor Supervisor and
Managers
- Conducting and EHeclive Performance Review
w
Human Resources
Internal Alignment:
• Human Resources initialed a Cily Wide Classification
and Compensation Review of all positions.
• Thorough review of the hierarchy ofjobs across
occupational categories and levels of responsibility.
NaXf Dp: Evaluate entl Redesign Compemetion Plen
"''1~V
//
.
(elcorehmtlb es the Salary Plen Project) /~+
.•~
5
1/8/2013
Human Resources
Wellness Works Incentive Program:
• 164 employees enrolled in FY 12
• 206 employees enrolled in FY 131°: °roeumterzsrz7
• 174 participants in Health Screening FY 12
• 244 participants in Health Screening FY 13
207 employeesreceived 5100 nex creditror
completion of Personal Wellness Profiles and
Health ecreeningl ~.
Human Resources
Wellness Works Incentive Program continued:
Aggregate Data for Wellness Profiles:
• BS % of employees °Doing Well /Excellent" in FY12
• 79 % of employees "Doing Well/ Excellent° in FY73
• 9% hypertension (national average - 32 %) in FY72
• 11%hyperension in FY 13
• 70%in'Overweighl/Obese°range in FY12
• 75% in °Overweight/Obese range in FY73
/~
,~
Human Resources
Wellness Works Incentive Program continued:
Aggregate Data for Wellness Profiles:
• 57% elevated blood pressure in FY12
• 50% elevated blood pressure in FY13
• 5 % smokers in FY12
• 3%smokers in FY13
Next up: Evaluate results from health sueening to
tlelertnine motor risks and largetpmgrems ~~'~~i111..///
towards lowering those risks ~
6
1 /8/2013
Human Resources
Re-Designed Employee Benefits:
M MERCER ~,
..
"Got You Covered..."
City Attorney
~~
City Attorney
Service to City Council and Commissions:
• Review and sign-off on Council agenda items via
Agenda Manager
• Cover Cily Council meetings
~^'~/
,~
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VeMal Dana onm
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7
1/8/2013
City Attorney
Service to City Council and Commissions
continued:
• Coverage for 7 boards:
- Ads Commission
- Historic Preservation Commission
- Parks 8 Reaeagen Commission
- Planning 8 Zoning Commission
- Solid WasteAWisory Commission
-Traffic Safety COmmisslon dTm~cCammission
-Impact Fee Committee ^,
City Attorney
Service to City Council and Commissions
continued:
• Resolutions for appointments
• Coverage for 6 commissions & Impact Fee Committee
• Attend meetings, provide trainings, administrative
support, contract review and document drafting
• Litigation Management
.~
City Attorney
Service to City Council and Commissions
continued:
Next up:
Commercial recycling ortlinence
Commissioner handbook
Ongoing uptlateol Cily ordinances
Updele impact fee methodology
1/8/2013
City Attorney
Service to Mayor's Office:
• Social media and Event calendar posting policy
• Legislative Review
• Research for concerned citizens
• Council meeting preparation
• Legal support to Public Information Officer ~
?-a/
A
City Attorney
Service to Information Services Department:
Sign-offs on permits and licenses
Staff training on public records request process
Review all public records request responses
- 180 requesLS in 2012
City Attorney
Service to Information Services Department
continued:
• Special events contract negotiations, Follow-up
• ITS and New World interagency agreements
Next up:
Records retention policy (Phase 2)
TUP fntle updates (lieretl events)
MFD end MPD public records request process updates
i
9
1 /8/2013
City Attorney
Service to Finance Department:
• Oversee bankruptcy adversary proceeding (DBSI)
• Bankruptcy case management
- Monilorcases to observe court-0rderedslay; fle Proof(s) of Claim;
ensure Ihal billing resumes, when allowed
- Acl as liaison between Iruslee, court, MUGS
- Advise an /ereclosure, garnishment
-95 cases managetl in 2012
T
City Attorney
Service to Finance Department
continued:
• Board oT Adjustment organization and oversight
- 4 cases heartl and resolved by Board in 2012
• Support and guidance
- Purchasing
- Cons WCtian management best preclim task Force
Next up:
City COde updates-cudgel and CFO /'~
City Attorney
Service to Police Department
and Code Enforcement:
• Ordinance updates
- Smoking Product Consumpllon Areas
- Nuisance- gregili, dumping, junk vehicles, noise
- Vehicle storage (e.g. parking on lawn)
- Clean mnslructionsile requirements
- Fireworks signage uptlales 1.
-Animalconlrol8 vicious dogs /~.~/
.i
10
1/8/2013
City Attorney
Service to Police Department
and Code Enforcement continued:
Cougar Dog Agreement
Public Safety Academy waiver
Legal support for UDC, nuisance/weed, animal
control, abandoned vehicles, I-Code, miscellaneous
code compliance cases
- Allend meetings wish violators antl staff regaNingcompliance
objectives antl timelines
- Dra/I notice of violatioNOrder to abate letters,
compliance checklists 1
/i+,v~
w
City Attorney
Service to Police Department
and Code Enforcementcontinued:
Next Up:
City-wltle process for enrorcemennssues
Address nuisance references throughout Cily Code
Parking code updates
False elertn issues
TUP code updates (tiered events)
City Attorney
Service to Fire Department:
Public records request response review
Medical director standard agreement updates
Property release waiver
Smoke alarm program waivers
Acquired structure
III Next Up: II
Fae schedule uptlale
False alarm Issues
Firevrorks, open burning cotle updates
i
11
1 /8/2013
II = ~ v City Attorney III
Service to Parks 8 Recreation Department
• Recreation instructor agreements
• Special event agreements
• Kleiner Park Community Garden agreement
• Real property agreements
- Pathway easements
-HCquisilion ormainlenance shop site
- Farm leases
City Attorney
Service to Parks 8 Recreation
Department continued:
• Event sponsorship policy
• City arborisVhazard tree issues
• Joint use agreements for gym facilities
Next up:
Refine parlnershippolicydraft
Parks code update 1
City lVbodsl code update /~•r/
i
d(~
I`w~ City Attorney
Service to Public Works Department:
• Review and advise on waterlsewer easements
• Hookup, streetlight, reimbursement agreements
Next up:
Legal review of various proieas antl pending
eases including Environmental Issues
^'
w
12
1/8/2013
City Attorney
Service to Community Development
Department/Planning Division:
Advice, support regarding UDC enforcement, temporary
use permits
Serve on Slreelscape & Community Character
committee
As-neetled CDBG support, research, agreement
drafting and review
Provide pre-meeting issue analysis
City Attorney
Service to Community Development
DepartmentlBuildingSeryices Division
continued:
City Core Slreetscape Ordinance
• License Agreement with ACHDfor downtown
sidewalks
Assist in reviewing, drafting sign code .y,
• updates /Sv..i
City Attorney
Service to Community Development
Department/Building Services Division
continued:
• I-Code updates per Idaho Code changes
• Inspeclorcontract drafting
Next up:
Cotle compliance actions
;+r
13
1/8/2013
"Protecting Our City"
Risk Management
~-.~
Risk Management
Claims
Tort Claims
• 30 claims filed in FY 10
• 35 claims fled in FY 11
• 18 claims filed in FY 12 Workers'Comp.
45 claims filed in FY 10
31 claims filed in FY 11
35 claims filed in FY 12
1CRMP
~- w
Together...
II! We are The City of Meridian." III
14
Meridian City Council Meeting
DATE: January 8, 2013 ITEM NUMBER: 7C
PROJECT NUMBER:
ITEM TITLE:
Transportation Task Force and Traffic Safety Commission Joint Report: Discussion of the
Potential Establishment of the City Transportation Commission
MEETING NOTES
Community Item/Presentations Presenter Contact Info./Notes
CLERKS OFFICE FINAL ACTION
DATE: E-MAILED TO
STAFF SENT TO
AGENCY SENT TO
APPLICANT NOTES INITIALS
Meridian City Council Meeting
DATE: January 8, 2013 ITEM NUMBER:
PROJECT NUMBER:
ITEM TITLE:
Community Development: Ada County Title 8 and 9 Amendments for Meridian Area
of City Impact, Unincorporated Ada County
MEETING NOTES
Community Item/Presentations Presenter Contact Info./Notes
CLERKS OFF/CE FINAL ACTION
DATE: E-MAILED TO
STAFF SENT TO
AGENCY SENT TO
APPLICANT NOTES INITIALS
January 3, 2013
MEMORANDUM
TO: Mayor Tammy de Weerd
City Council Members
CC: City Clerk
FROM: Caleb Hood, Planning Manager C~
RE: Ada County Title 8 & 9
January 8, 2013 City Council Workshop Agenda Item
On Wednesday, October 315i, 2012, City Staff submitted a letter to Ada County
Development Services requesting an amendment to Ada County Code, Title 9, Chapter
4. This request was sent to Ada County in accordance with Idaho Code Title 67,
Chapter 65 and our agencies' Title 9 Agreement. The intent of the letter was to request
Ada County recognize, and use, the most current version of the City's Comprehensive
Plan (Comp Plan) and Future Land Use Map (PLUM). Both the text and the PLUM (i.e.
- South Meridian) of the Comp Plan were amended by Council on October 16t", 2012.
The subject request to the County is the first the City has initiated since 2008 when the
County approved the City's Area of City Impact (AOCI) expansion south of Amity, and
north up to the Boise River. Since 2008, the City has adopted a reformatted Comp Plan
and added/updated some policies that Staff would like the County to acknowledge.
After submitting the request to Ada County, they informed us that they would in fact
move forward with an amendment to Title 9. However, instead of just modifying Title 9
to reflect the City's most current planning documents, County Staff would like to take
some of the existing language in Title 9 and move it into Title 8 (their zoning ordinance.)
City and County Staff met on December 18t" to discuss which sections, elements and
standards may be appropriate for inclusion in Meridian's portion of Ada County, Title 8.
Staff would like to discuss with Council a new approach to development review of
projects within Ada County and Meridian's AOCI, as well as a new way to
"renegotiate" future changes to the PLUM and Comp Plan.
Community Development Department . 33 E. Broadway Avenue, Meridian, ID 8364z
Phone zo8-884-5533 • Fax zo8-888-6854. www.meridiancity.org
Page 2
Today, the City receives transmittals from the County for developments within our AOCI
~ and comments like any member of the public or agency. Sometimes our comments are
incorporated as conditions of the project, and sometimes they are not. What Staff would
like to explore is including some of City standards within Ada County's Title 8
regulations so application of conditions and improvements for certain elements are
consistent across projects. This will also help County projects, in the future when they
are surrounded by City limits, to match-in with projects approved by the City. Some of
the standards we are looking at Ada County adopting and enforcing with developments
in ourAOCI are:
Potential Elements/Standards for Adoption
Streets -private/public improvement and stub street requirements
Landscape buffers along arterials (materials and/or width?)
Access to arterials
Street lights
Floodplain standards
Billboards (any other signs?)
Fencing (barbed wire and electric wire prohibit. How about chain-link, other?)
Pathways? (Construction or preservation?)
Not Recommended but Potential
Design Review
Other?
Even if the City and County agree to amend Title 8 and 9, the City would still have an
opportunity to comment and provide any site-specific comments/conditions on projects.
So for example, if the City needs a sewer easement, a site for fire station, etc. we can
still coordinate that with the County and the property owner. What this change would do
is add a level of consistency in fit and feel for certain elements of County projects that
would be difficult and costly to retrofit in the future as these properties are incorporated.
These elements should help provide a clear and seamless look for projects, regardless
of if they are developed in the County or the City.
After the work session, City Staff will meet again with Ada County and proceed with
amending Title 8 and/or 9.
Meridian City Council Meeting
DATE: January 8, 2013 ITEM NUMBER: 7E
PROJECT NUMBER:
ITEM TITLE:
Public Works - FY 2012 Project Close Out Report
MEETING NOTES
Community Item/Presentations Presenter Contact Info./Notes
CLERKS OFFICE FINAL ACTION
DATE: E-MAILED TO
STAFF SENT TO
AGENCY SENT TO
APPLICANT NOTES INITIALS
E IDIAN~-
Public ~ D A H O
Works Department
Mayor Tammy de Weerd
Cky Ceunrll Mem6aUr
Nelth Bird
Brad Hoaglun
Charles Rountree
David Zaremba
TO: Mayor Tammy de Weerd
Members of the City Council
FROM: Kyle Radek
Assistant City Engineer
DATE: December 19, 2012
SUBJECT: FY 2012 PROJECT CLOSE OUT REPORT
I. DEPARTMENT CONTACT PERSONS
Kyle Radek, Asst. City Engineer
Warren Stewart, Engineering Manager
Tom Barry, Public Works Director
IL DESCRIPTION
A. Back rground
489-0343
489-0350
489-0372
The Engineering Division has completed several construction projects in FY
2012. In accordance with the current purchasing policy, the Engineering
Division is requesting to report to Council on those projects completed. The
reports include; general project information, project benefits, contract amount,
change orders, and final project cost. This will be accomplished by project
managers through a PowerPoint presentation.
Approved for Council Agenda:
Engineering Manager
IL
Date
Page 1 of 1
Meridian City Council Meeting
DATE: January 8, 2013 ITEM NUMBER:
PROJECT NUMBER:
ITEM TITLE:
Public Works -Source Water Protection Area of Drilling Concern Presentation
MEETING NOTES
Community Item/Presentations Presenter Contact Info./Notes
CLERKS OFFICE FINAL ACTION
DATE: E-MAILED TO
STAFF SENT TO
AGENCY SENT TO
APPLICANT NOTES INITIALS
E IDIAN~--
Public ~ D A H O
Works Department
TO: Mayor Tammy de Weerd
Members of the City Council
FROM: Kyle Radek, PE
Assistant City Engineer
Mayor Tammy de Weerd
Cky Ceunell Mem6eru
Keith Bird
Brad Hoaglun
Charles Rountree
David Zaremba
DATE: December 18, 2012
SUBJECT: SOURCE WATER PROTECTION AREA OF DRILLING CONCERN
PRESENTATION
(JANUARY 8, 2013 PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT REPORTS)
A. Back rg ound
Last spring, City staff and our consultant, Hydro Logic, Inc. gave a presentation
to City Council regarding the City's options for taking action to protect ground
water supply through better well construction and abandonment practices.
Council directed staff to proceed with preparation of a request for an Area of
Drilling Concern (ADC) to the Idaho Department of Water Resources (IDWR).
Over the last several months, we have conducted preliminary outreach to IDWR
staff. on the concept of the ADC. In addition we developed the scientific report
and request for an ADC. We are now prepared to proceed with submittal as well
as outreach to affected stakeholders. The executive summary from this report is
attached.
This presentation by Kyle Radek, Assistant City Engineer and Ed Squires,
contracted Hydrogeologist, will review the primary issues associated with
protection of ground water. The presentation will address the ADC application,
possible options for IDWR to achieve the desired results, the outreach plan, and
will provide Council with an opportunity to ask questions and provide guidance
for outreach.
B. Recommended Action
Direct staff to proceed
guidance.
ADC application and outreach plan with Council
Approved for Council Agenda:
Stewart, Engineering Manager
Page 1 of 3
CITY OF MERIDIAN REQUEST TO THE DIRECTOR OF THE
DEPARTMENT OF WATER RESOURCES FOR DESIGNATION OF AN
AREA OF DRILLING CONCERN WITHIN ITS AREA OF IMPACT
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The source of potable water for the City of Meridian is threatened.
Through development of water supply infrastructure needed to serve a growing community,
general knowledge of land development and activities in the area, and ground water monitoring,
the City has concluded that it faces the following threats to its ground water supply.
1. Natural and human -introduced contaminants that make water unsuitable for
potable use are present in some aquifers under Meridian. Natural contaminants
include arsenic and uranium. Human -introduced contaminants include, nitrates,
pesticides and the chemical perch lorethylene.
2. Most problematic naturally occurring contaminants occur in ground water at
shallow depths and human -caused contaminants are introduced at the ground
surface.
3. The deeper ground waters relied upon for municipal supply are, at least at
present, generally free of problematic contaminants.
4. The subsurface geology beneath Meridian includes natural protective layers of
clay, silt or other significantly impermeable materials that prevent or significantly
impede the downward movement of shallow contaminants to deeper layers of the
aquifer system.
5. Wells that are constructed or abandoned without sealing the annular space
between the well casing and the drilled hole serve as conduits that pierce and
interrupt the low -permeability clay layers and degrade their ability to provide
natural protection to the deeper aquifers.
These facts lead to the conclusion that the construction of unsealed wells in and around the City
of Meridian poses the primary threat to the quality of the City's source water by introducing
conduits that can allow contaminants to move into otherwise uncontaminated high-quality
ground waters. As contamination of the shallow zones becomes more widespread, and more
widely recognized, we can expect that at least some drillers will drive unsealed wells even
deeper into the aquifer system.
The primary threat to the City's source water can be mitigated.
The movement of contaminants from shallow to deep ground water can be impeded or stopped.
Wells can be drilled and constructed in a manner that does not compromise natural protective
low -permeability layers and existing unsealed wells can be abandoned in such a way as to
restore the natural protective layering of the aquifer system. However, the current state-wide
rules for well construction and abandonment do not require methods or materials that
accomplish this for the Meridian area because the currently allowed drill -and -drive drilling
Page 2 of 3
methods of air-rotary and cable-tool result in unsealed annular spaces between the steel casing
and the drilled hole (by their very design) that later cannot be sealed with grout (by their very
design) and that allow contaminants to migrate upwards and downwards within the aquifer
system.
Changes to statewide well construction rules are not needed. Rather, the City proposes specific
standards for well construction in the unique hydrogeologic environment of the Meridian area.
Such standards can be created and administered through the designation of an Area of Drilling
Concern (ADC). The City is requesting an ADC be designated for Meridian's Area of Impact
(AOI). Specific rules would apply to the construction and abandonment of wells in the Meridian
Area of Drilling Concern (MADC) shown on Figure 1.
The primary well drilling standards the City requests as part of an ADC are:
1. Require the direct mud-rotary drilling method for all domestic wells drilled deeper than
200 feet within the AOI.
2. Require full-depth casing seals from land surface to the top of the aquifer being drawn
on.
3. Require plastic casing orhigh-strength/low- alloy steel casing made in the USA.
4. Require perforation and pressure grout abandonment of wells when they are replaced or
decommissioned.
5. In place of the Start Card system, all new wells will require an approved prospectus prior
to drilling and construction of any well within the AOI.
These ADC standards, which are described in more detail below, will accomplish the primary
goal of protecting the ground water resource. They also can be expected to result in better
understanding of the ground water resource, lower-cost wells from a life cycle perspective,
greater well efficiency, and reduced well interference claims and water rights protests.
Page 3 of 3
Meridian City Council Meeting
DATE: January 8, 2013 ITEM NUMBER: 7G
PROJECT NUMBER:
ITEM TITLE:
Information Services/Police Department: Update on Network Connectivity Between
City Hall and the Police Department
MEETING NOTES
Community Item/Presentations Presenter Contact Info./Notes
CLERKS OFFICE FINAL ACTION
DATE: E-MAILED TO
STAFF SENT TO
AGENCY SENT TO
APPLICANT NOTES INITIALS
Meridian City Council Meeting
DATE: January 8, 2013 ITEM NUMBER: $
PROJECT NUMBER:
ITEM TITLE:
Future Meeting Topics
MEETING NOTES
Community Item/Presentations Presenter Contact Info./Notes
CLERKS OFFICE FINAL ACTION
DATE: E-MAILED TO
STAFF SENT TO
AGENCY SENT TO
APPLICANT NOTES INITIALS