City Council - Regular Meeting

Well, good morning, everybody. Wonderful to have you all in here with us today. I'll go ahead and call the meeting to order and ask the clerk to call the roll. And then before we get started, I've got a couple of comments tonight.

Corliss.

Here.

Halliburton. Here. Morales. Here. Nash. Here. Stead.

Here.

Willits. Five present, one absent.

All right. So we have a work session today. We're going to hear from quite a few different department heads and Hannah will kick us off. But, you know, I want to just set the stage because much like last year, we're finding ourselves fiscally constrained with rising costs and fewer revenue sources. And I'm so proud and grateful of the team that we have at the city of Boise, our department heads, your teams throughout your departments, the city council staff. because every year we're asked to do more and we embrace that challenge in creative ways by finding efficiencies meeting the community where it's at to ensure that we can provide the services needed i'm looking at additional revenue sources such as grants all so that we can continue to be the place that people want to call home because we invest intentionally in neighborhoods throughout the city and the services people need, and importantly, in the people that make Boise what she is. You know, I am really proud today of the investments that we've been able to make. from housing to parks throughout the city to make good on our goal of ensuring that every kid is 10 minutes from a park, to policing to meet the needs and expectations of our residents, and fires as we're a growing city, because we are growing. And that means that we have more that we need to do with the constraints that we're facing. And each of you in this room, the city council and others make it possible for us to continue being the best place to live in this state and a city that's safe and welcoming for everyone. So look forward to hearing from department has today we've heard in recent days needs from in recent weeks needs from police from fire and from a couple other departments we'll drill deeper today and hear from other departments too both what's happening as well as what will be happening and the priorities and that our professional directors professional staff have developed together to meet the needs of the city and with that hannah thanks for kicking us off

Great, thanks. Good morning, Mayor, Council members, Hannah Brasker, Chief of Staff. Before I get into this, I just want to thank the teams, really probably lots of people in the city that have touched this budget as we bring you proposals today. Alicia and the budget team, the directors that you'll hear from today and their teams and the deputy chiefs of staff all been working for months on this. So thanks everyone for your work. Really quickly, just overview of what we're going to do today. I'm going to do some high level, just a level set of how we approach the budget. Alicia is going to do a little more detail about our approach and strategy, and then we'll go into the department presentations. I've lined them up in order here. This says morning agenda. We'll see where we get certainly if we can fit more than through community engagement, we can do that this morning. I also didn't build in a break knowing that you'll take one, but take it wherever you get. And then after the noon meeting, we'll come back, pick up wherever we left off and make it all the way through organizational effectiveness. it's a packed agenda obviously we have a lot of departments we have built-in time for questions the directors are prepared to answer questions for you but we'll also be tracking any sort of detailed follow-up you may need at the end of today i'll come back up and go over what i think we need to come back to you with make sure we didn't miss anything so if there is a deeper dive we want to make sure we get through everything today so i'll keep note of that So, as we've been discussing with you over the past few months, and the mayor just mentioned, we are, we continue to be constrained in the general fund. Some of the factors that go into that are beyond city's control. We've got state limitations on our revenue through House Bill 389. And then we just have what everyone across the country is facing, just rising operational and compensation costs. And that coupled with economic uncertainty really has us focusing on maintaining some level of flexibility into the future as much as we can. And so with that in mind, these three themes you'll see throughout today and really how we approach this budget. So the first is focusing on what you'll see referred to as run the business. But really what we mean by that is maintaining our current service levels for the community and being able to deliver on the long plan projects. Those are now coming to fruition, wanting to be able to do that. We also want to balance sort of current and future needs. So thinking about this year's budget build, but also maintaining that flexibility. And then finally aligning our priorities to a multi-year investment plan. We came to you, you had a conversation about library access, you had conversation about public safety. Those are multi-year strategies that include diverse funding sources. And so wanting to make sure we're approaching that budget with that in mind. In a little bit more context, we've talked about how we're constrained. Really, most of our resources are committed to that running the business, maintaining our current service levels, leaving about 1% flexibility. And that 1%, we've got to balance some additional unfunded needs to maintain that operations level, and then any new investments you may want to make. Again, that multi-year new funding source strategy. We've talked about public safety, staff and facilities. This is also for community amenities like library, parks, pathways, et cetera. And then finally making sure that we're leveraging all the funding tools available At Your Direction, we're exploring public safety bond and levy for facilities and staffing. We're also leveraging grants and private philanthropy to fill in gaps where we can, making sure we have set aside for matches, local matches for those grants. And then we've recently kicked off our impact fee update work, and you'll see that in later fiscal year come to completion. Before I get into what the details of our FTE requests this year, we thought it would be good to look back from 2019 today to sort of see our staff growth trends. And you can see in fiscal year 27, there's a total of 10 FTE requests in the general fund. And that's nearly half of sort of the lowest years, but you'll see some years are even four times as much. So this really goes to that run the business, we want to maintain the service level we have, we do need to add a few things to be able to maintain that. But that's why you're seeing this lower level. So the FTEs and the general fund, four of them are revenue neutral out of PDS and in the zoo. We've got one that we need to maintain operations at investments that you've made over the last few years. So that's at our Whitney pool and new splash pads. We've got two attorney FTE requests in there and that's, we've talked a little bit about this before, that's related to pressures from the county courthouse and the changes that they've made and how they operate. We have a public safety position for security FTE, and then a couple in the service expansion for library and the continuous improvement role. And you'll hear from the departments today if you have questions, specific questions on those positions. And then, moving to the enterprise or special revenue fund again not funded out of the general fund we've got 19 and airport for the rental car facility and concourse a we've got a few for warm springs golf in water renewal and then installed waste. And then switching to compensation, to bring you the proposal today, we really kept in mind these goals you'll see on the left hand side of the screen. So we wanna make sure we remain competitive with our wages and stay aligned with the market. We wanna maintain rich benefits for our teams and retain top talent. And so with that in mind, we're coming today with the following proposals, a 3% salary increase for base pay, 0.5% of base pay set aside for targeted market adjustments. And that's for those high level, excuse me, high need positions where we see the biggest gap with the market and wanting to, again, stay aligned with the market and maintain that wage competitiveness. A 1% base pay for our flex rewards. Those are those real-time rewards throughout the year that we're able to provide to staff. But in order to do that, we are proposing eliminating the one-time performance pay. And we've done that with being informed by staff where they most see benefit in their base pay and flex rewards. So that's where we've decided to invest. And then, finally, the 3% increase in the employee contribution for healthcare and you heard from Stacy a few weeks ago. We have that built into the proposal today. And so, with that i'm unless anyone has questions right off the BAT i'm going to pass it over to alicia to dig in a little more. Okay.

Good morning, Mayor, Council Members, Alicia McAndrews, Senior Manager for the Budget Office. Hannah covered the broader environment of the budget and some of the pressures. I'm going to cover how those pressures translated into the budget decisions for the 27 budget. And specifically, I'm going to walk through how the proposed budget is designed to balance operational needs, some of the priorities that you all have and long-term financial stability. So you have seen this slide before in our previous budget workshops. This shows the structural limits on the general fund flexibility. The 99% is what's already committed of our general fund. And the 1% on the top is the flexibility that we have. And what's important to recognize is that it's not just in this fiscal year in 27, but it's also going forward in our forecast, the 1% of general fund revenue that's available. That's because property tax growth is capped under state law, as Hannah mentioned, while our expenditures continue to grow. um particularly compensation and it grows faster than inflation and over time that creates that structural challenge when expenditure growth naturally outpaces growth in our most stable revenue source which is property taxes so this year's budget is intentionally focused on operational stability long-term sustainability and caution around new ongoing commitments And that thought continues here on this slide where that 1% that we saw on the previous slide is shown here in the bars. So the bars represent the annual projected flexibility available over the next several years. So FY27 is our budget year here. The colored sections represent new ongoing commitments for run the business, as we're calling it this year, for things that are inevitably going to pop up to maintain current levels of service. And once added, those commitments carry forward every year and consume capacity. Then the green sections represent the flexibility remaining, and they're available for future councils to respond to changing conditions, economic uncertainty, inflationary pressures, or new priorities. So the key takeaway here is that if all available flexibility is consumed by ongoing commitments today, future flexibility quickly disappears. And we already know that additional operating pressures are coming in the future. including inflationary pressures or you know technology new facility costs things like that so preserving some level of flexibility in the future is financially healthy and responsible and it maintains the city's ability to respond to those changing conditions and that reality became one of the defining principles for this budget and priority was given to one-time investments over permanent ongoing commitments whenever possible and that approach allowed us to address important one-time needs or operational infrastructure technology and community needs without permanently consuming future budget capacity So with that in mind, we'll take a look at the revenue picture supporting the general fund here. So we've seen this slide before, but it just gives us an overview of property taxes being kind of our general fund largest source at 63%. And overall, the main takeaway being The available 75% of the general fund is flexible. And then 22% of the general fund is dedicated revenue sources based on reimbursements from department revenue, things such as development fees, fee revenue for parks, zoo, other fee-based services. And then about 3% consists of one-time or otherwise revenues that can't be relied upon for ongoing balancing. So while the general fund as a whole is large in size, not all of it is truly discretionary, only about 75% of it. um so this slide summarizes the property tax recommendations for the 27 budget uh the proposal assumes that uh we take the three percent allowable base it also assumes um the allowable amount associated with new construction uh the allowable amount adjusted um with the sunset of the west side urban renewal district and um due to house bill 389 only 90 of new construction growth and 80 of the west side adjustment will be incorporated into the ongoing base and together those uh legislative limitations reduce the ongoing base by about 579 000 compared to what we otherwise would have been allowed if not for hb 389 Also on the expense side of the budget, we're including $900,000 for targeted property tax relief for those disproportionately affected by rising housing and property tax costs. So this slide highlights the proposed uses of foregone property tax authority. So under Idaho law, if council chooses not to take the full allowable levy increase in a given year, the unused authority becomes foregone and may be used in future years. So in FY27, the recommendation is to focus primarily on supporting public safety, operational needs and the city's Valley regional transit commitment. After this proposed use of approximately, after this proposed use of the $2 million that will be taken in foregone, there'll be about $1.6 million or less than 1% of foregone capacity left. So the proposed use includes, as I said, public safety, including equipment professional services for police fire maintenance and operations increases and you'll hear from departments throughout the day and they'll go into more detail on some of the specifics of these investments. So stepping back and from kind of the detail and looking higher level at the general fund expenditures, this slide breaks down the general fund expenses at a very high level. Of the general fund, 71% is dedicated to salaries and benefits for the 1,580 FTEs employed by the city. This includes, in our assumptions for fiscal year 27, we are assuming starting July 1st of 2027, a 2.5% Percy increase. That would only be for one quarter of the fiscal year, but we are assuming that increase that has been signaled by Percy. And about 20% of the general fund supports maintenance operations and major equipment things like facilities supplies contract contractual services fleet services and operational infrastructure needs. And then the remainder supports transfers such as transfers to the capital fund and the city support for brt. then the next slide breaks down general fund expenditures by department clearly the the main takeaway being that the majority of the general fund supports the public safety departments by a significant margin so the 24 service emergency response services provided and What you see here is the change from fiscal year 26 to 27, and what is represented is just the inflationary increases, the contractual increases, and planned or forecasted compensation increases. So next, we're gonna get into a bit more detail on the decision prioritization waterfall or the thinking or framework that went into the budget process. The proposed budget was built using this prioritization framework and it was applied to every change request. The highest priority was given to what we've called run the business, those non-negotiable items that are needed to maintain the current level of service. Second priority was given to one-time investments. So items that don't reduce future flexibility. Then revenue offset. So items that increased where new revenue was increased to support the spending. So it was neutral to the flexibility. and then there were the foregone items so taking uh the one percent in foregone raising about two million dollars and then offsetting the spending and then finally was service expansion so items that we were considered um service expansion investment opportunities that um was that is new ongoing spending and reducing that one percent that uh flexibility our capacity So the next several slides will just give you a high level look at some of the investments. It doesn't cover everything, but you will hear about all of the items in the budget throughout the day today. So some of the themes included in the run the business category, which total about $900,000, include operating impacts of prior investments. So new parks, maintenance, a maintenance mechanic for Whitney Pool and splash pads. unavoidable cost increases, and compliance and risk management for things like streetlights and wetland mitigation. One time investments, enabling us to modernize technology, federal grant match, facility infrastructure improvements, and strategic community investments, including seed funding for West Boise Library access. Revenue offset for maintenance worker at the zoo, PDS investments, and also parking service investments. And this is largely growth and demand driven services. And then finally, service expansion, about $1.1 million, meeting community needs. And also this category includes the safer match for nine firefighters. And this investment positions us for the multi-year investment plan that we've talked about. And as we've discussed, ongoing funding for the nine FTEs, if we are successful in getting the grant, will be identified going forward. So that concludes my slides. And so next I will hand it off to Public Works to Director Steve Burgos to go into more detail on the Department of Public Works.

Madam Mayor, just a real quick question for Alicia.

Alicia, thank you. So just to be clear, you're talking about a 3% recommendation for property tax and then 1% foregone? Correct. Great. And then when you're talking about the ongoing investments, that have future costs, we're really talking about an increase in FTEs and things like new parks that would require additional maintenance or new facilities that would require additional maintenance as well.

Madam Mayor, Council Member Halliburton, correct. Ongoing costs include things like FTEs, ongoing contracts, one-time items include investments such as, we could go back, I could. equipment replacement, you know, a project that has a limited start and a stop.

Great. And then I know that you said this, but I just want to make sure that I'm clear. If we were awarded the SAFER grant, which we're planning on applying for, future budget models are showing us that we would have the ability to maintain those FTEs, the nine, I think you said nine FTEs going on in the future. The future budget models show that we'd be able to support that.

Our forecast is not including a model for the nine FTEs. We would identify a future funding source, looking for a future funding source.

Perfect. Thank you.

Hi, Mayor. Alicia, thank you so much for the presentation. Just a quick question. What is the total number of the fiscal 27 general fund expenditure we're looking at? I will need to pull it up.

Okay.

I can get it later. That's fine. I'll come. Thank you.

Madam Mayor, council members, good morning.

I'm Steve Burgos, the public works director, and I have the distinct pleasure of batting lead off for my fellow directors. Jumping into public works, just a quick overview of our kind of purview of responsibilities. On this slide, you'll see in bold that denotes an enterprise fund, so that's our fee-for-service funds. And then we also received some general fund funding for things like climate action, our city facilities and fleet. And then engineering and administration and finance would probably be half bold, half regular fund because those also support our enterprise funds. So big picture, as you've been hearing a theme from Alicia and from Hannah, for Public Works, our focus this year and moving into next year is really on execution projects. You're not going to see a whole lot of things you haven't seen before. um in years prior we've been doing a lot of planning but now we're in the mode of getting projects done and so you'll see in the in the presentation focus on uh capital investment both within the general fund and within the enterprise funds so zooming out so for all of us the directors as we go through our slide deck it'll start with our strategic priorities And then we'll talk about our FY26 investments and how those are going. And then we'll get into our FY27 requests. So kicking us off here on our strategic priorities, our utilities management side, we're really focused on that capital throughput. For example, in water renewal services, we've had years where we've had a larger capital fund, but still haven't gotten that spent in that fiscal year. I'm happy to report for FY26, it looks like we're going to get to that almost $100 million capital throughput. That's been a very deliberate process. We've set up program management. We've set up people and processes to make sure we're getting that money spent. And I also just want to highlight the evolving asset management approach. An example I have here is streetlights, but I could use it on any number of capital assets. As you know, we're aging city, we are aging infrastructure, so we're really trying to get our arms around how best to prioritize improvements within the capital investments. In the case of streetlights, we're asking for additional funding, you'll see here in a second, just to make sure we're prioritizing the right streetlight replacements for a risk management strategy. On water renewal, we have several large projects that are huge priorities for us. At Lander Street, I'll give you more detail here in a second. At West Boise, we're kicking out phase one of improvements. And then throughout the system, we have about 1,000 miles of pipeline underneath the city. And so we have pipeline replacements throughout. And then we're also doing some facility projects, whether they be related to ADA improvements or just large-scale maintenance and major repairs. I'll show some of those as well. And then last but not least, customer service. This fiscal year and moving forward, we've been making investment into making sure that our customer service is as good as it can be. Really excited about our utility billing software that's been long overdue. I know our utility billing team is really excited about that. It's going to have a much better interface with our residents. We're providing support to vulnerable populations to help on affordability issues through climate action. And I'll share with you some of the investments that we've been making there. then internally um there's two things i wanted to highlight uh we have a take we've taken over fleet um about a year and a half ago fleet joined public works and then when we've been focusing with our directors in my affinity group on how best to support their needs and so really trying to up our game on the internal services to our customers um within the city and then that last bullet to provide all of these services whether it's water renewal services whether it's the solid waste program We need staff that are really good at what they do, technical experts. And so we formed a workforce development team that's focused on how do we increase our retention rates? How do we address issues from everything from recruitment all the way to retirement? Where are there gaps and where can we make investments to make sure we're keeping our staff? So moving on into our general fund, 26 investments and impact, you'll see a long list on the left of streetlight feasibility study. That's us looking into potentially forming some type of funding strategy for the long term for streetlight replacement. We have significant deferred maintenance that you've heard a lot about. And so we're focused on that major repair maintenance program and then improvements at the depot. We do have some facility planning ongoing. Most of our work has transitioned into construction and repairs, but we still have a little bit of planning going. And we also have ADA upgrades at the depot at Idaho Ice World and other locations throughout the city. And then on far right, something that we've instituted within Public Works is really a focus on self-solving some of our challenges. And an example is as we see a vacancy open to public works um in the past maybe we would have pretty quickly filled that and maybe not looked at do is that a is that really a priority for right now uh we're trying to do a better job of once we have a vacancy within public works do we really need to fill that position or can we repurpose that to a higher priority knowing there's so many things that are evolving within public works so we've been able to do that in two instances um or we've self-solved an issue and not had to come to mayor and council for a request Moving on to the FY27 proposals for the general fund. So for our operating side of the house, we are asking for an additional 50,000 for vulnerable population support. In this case, we want to pilot a concept around rooftop solar. We're asking for an additional $37,000 for streetlight support. That's going to go towards streetlight pole inspections. and then some additional support for our facilities services and operations that's our team that really runs all the facilities the fire stations the libraries the city halls we have two requests a base edition of 203 000 to cover those additional costs that Alicia mentioned on for power automation software Etc and then a one-time for 32 000 for minor equipment purchases And on the capital side of the house for the general fund, we're requesting the $5.6 million for our facilities maintenance and improvements that goes back to really deferred maintenance, ADA improvements, remodels, We have the $210,000 for street lights. That's to go out and both offer safety lights for citizens who request a light in their neighborhood, but also the systematically going back and replacing poles over time. And then last but not least, on the capital side for the general fund, we have the phase two of the annex parking garage improvements at $1.5 million. And then moving on to the enterprise funds, just a quick look back at all of our enterprise funds for FY26, some of the investments we've been making. Going back to the asset management, we're really focused on those aging assets and how best to prioritize replacement while addressing risk exposure that we have. We have a priority-based budgeting pilot that I'm really excited about. We're partnering with Department of Finance. We're splitting the cost on this, and we're looking at our operational costs specifically within the Water Renewal Fund to figure out if there are efficiencies that we can find to more effectively deliver our service at a better cost. We're hopeful to wrap that up in October, and if things go well, then we would pivot both to include those cost savings in the FY28 budget, but then also consider how this might be used in other parts of the city this pilot. And then, last but not least, on the enterprise funds within water renewal services we're looking at some novel regulatory approaches with de Q. To balance both the protection of the boise river which we take very seriously, but also considering how we do that. Thinking about affordability of rates and so we're hopeful to have the integrated planning process wrapped up hopefully this year and that'll give us some flexibility on how we both meet regulations, but also balance cost. And then on the capital side of the house for FY26 and the enterprise funds, we've been really busy at the facilities. So you can see Lander Street phase two is well underway, West Boise secondary improvements, and we have made some investments in the recycled water program. All of this all total is about $100 million in investments and we'll be on pace to spend that money to make sure that we're getting these improvements complete at the facilities. Okay, moving on to our FY27 request for the enterprise funds, and these will be broken out by enterprise fund. On the water renewal side, on the operations side of the house, we are requesting two FTEs, one an industrial electrician for the phosphorus removal facility. That's the facility out by Notice Parma. We are operating that facility kind of at full bore to be able to prove up on a water rate and an electrician would be a great help out there and then we're requesting an additional water quality lab analyst we have additional requirements when our in our permits for for monitoring and testing and so we'd like to add a lab analyst you see at the bottom there for water renewal we have a 9.9 rate increase request that's approximately five dollars and seventy cents per month that's to cover increasing operational costs and the increase in our capital spend And this is very much in line with our 2021 water renewal bond projections that we showed back in 2021. Moving on to our capital request within water renewal services. As I mentioned, these are not any new projects that we're necessarily requesting. These are a continuation of programs, both at Lander, West Boise, and in the collection system. You can see what we're doing there. I won't read those to you. We've got a lot of work going on at the water renewal facilities. You see the recycled water program down there at 2.5 million. We're going to be back in front of council June 2nd to give you more information on the recycled water program and a recommendation we're going to make there. So I won't belabor that now. We'll have more information on June 2nd. And then we continue with our major repair and maintenance at the facilities to the tune of about $9.3 million. This is everything from repairing roofs to repairing elevators, small projects that add up across the facilities. On the materials management side of the house, this is our trash recycling and composting. We do have a staff request for a material management environmental specialist. This is to address additional workload related to the 2025 legislation that allows basically an open market for the roll-off container services. And then we are increasing services to multifamily housing, including what was once a pilot on the compost drop-off sites at multifamily. Now we have four sites, and those have been really successful. We need to have staff come on board to manage that. You can see they're writing through proposals for materials management. And just a quick explanation, you see some different numbers for the different types of customers. That's related to making sure that we just completed the cost of service study within the materials management program. That told us that we needed to have some different adjustments for different customers to make sure that everybody's paying the equitable share of the services they're receiving. So you can see there we're proposing a 9.5% for residential, and that's approximately $2.60 per month. And you can see the other recommendations there. On the geothermal and the irrigation funds, the geothermal fund, we're asking for support from the general fund to the tune of about $100,000. We have ongoing repair. The system is aging, and it'd be really nice to have a little bit of additional money for some of those major repair and maintenance items we have. We're asking for a rate increase for geothermal of 4.9% to cover inflation, and we do have those additional system maintenance requirements. And on the irrigation side, happy to announce we have a DWR grant, and we're providing a 50% match for that grant. And that's related to modernizing the system that we own and operate. And you can see below there, we have a 4% increase for the gravity system and a 24% increase for the lateral system. Those equate to fairly small numbers. We charge on an annual basis, a seasonal basis. So that's approximately, for the 24% rate increase, I think that's another $44 a year for those users. And then last but not least is our fleet. We took over fleet about a year and a half ago. We are doing some facility planning. As you can imagine, the number of assets that fleet has taken over has been significant over the last several years, but we haven't increased the size of the shop nor the bays. So we're doing a facility plan for them to consider what the shop ought to look like. Let's look at the parking lot, et cetera, to see what those asset management needs are. And then just to close out on a positive note, we looked at the fund, how the fund was set up, the fleet fund. It kind of works as a quasi enterprise fund internal to the city because it provides services to police, to fire, etc. We looked at the fund balance and we felt like it was a little bit too high. So we reduced the fund balance and we were able to pass some of those savings on or proposing to pass those savings on to the other city departments. And that'll help with the general fund costs. So in summary i'm kind of keeping on keeping on within public works we've got a lot of projects identified many of them are not new you've seen before, and we just want to keep on executing that's our focus for for fi 27. And with that i'll stand for any questions.

Go again. Martin.

Steve, good to see you today. A few questions for you. The streetlight study, that's something I believe that we funded last year. Is that complete at this point or is there still work that needs to be done as far as completing the study?

Madam Mayor, Council Member, still working on that. Excuse me. We're in the middle of completing the study, and one of the options there is to think about alternative funding sources, potentially something like a utility. So we're in the middle of that. Hasn't wrapped up yet.

Great. Yeah, that's good to hear. That was something that we identified in the Traffic Fatality Review Task Force as well as trying to address the lack of streetlights that are leading to bicycle, pedestrian, traffic-related fatalities, too. So it's good to hear. As far as the thousands of miles of pipes that we have underneath our city, this has been something that we've been working on for a while. Any idea, percentage-wise, where we're at as far as what's replaced and what still needs to be replaced?

Madam Mayor, Councilmember, good question. Let me get back to you on that. We've been working our way through it, but we've... Yeah, that's a good question. Let me get back to you on that one. Do you feel like we're on track? We're... I think we need to pick up the pace. If you assume we have 1,000 miles in the system and that each stick of pipe lasts between 75 to 100 years, that means we probably need to be replacing pipe at about a 10 miles per year clip. We're probably at about

two to three miles a year okay so we do need to pick up the pace there and you'll see in the coming years we're going to start increasing our investment in the pipeline replacement you'll see that in the capital improvement plan great and then a couple other quick ones for workforce development excited to see that do you have i mean public works has a lot of folks who've been there for a really long time especially some of the folks who are you know working at the water renewal facilities do you see are we getting too close to a spot where we have a lot of folks that are getting close to retirement where there's sort of a gap in that kind of knowledge and skill level Can you just dive into that a little bit more? Sure.

Madam Mayor, Council Member Halliburton, thanks for the question. It's interesting. We're seeing much younger employees at the facilities. Honestly, when I go out, there's times where I'll kind of not know a group of folks, and I'll introduce myself, and they'll have been there for less than a year. so we we've kind of seen that aging out over the past several years so it feels like we still have some very senior people but not as many as we used to have say five seven years ago um so part of the workforce development um approach is to start figuring out how do we make sure that the young staff that are coming on board are staying engaged see a future at the city uh see a future where they have career advancement opportunities that's one of the biggest issues i think we have within public works and specifically within water renewal when we look at exit interviews of staff and why they're leaving the city the number one issue is a lack of career advancement okay so part of the workforce development approach is to really start thinking through how do how do we do better at that especially for our younger staff that we want to keep who are talented and getting certifications we don't want them to leave how do we give them that sense that i have a career a way to advance here at the city

Perfect. And I'll have a couple more that I can ask you, you know, afterwards. But I think just kind of the last one that I want to make sure that I do ask is, are there any high priority major deferred maintenance projects that you had wanted to get to this year that you feel like we're not getting to?

Let me get back to you, Council Member. Thank you. Good question.

Council Member Corliss. Yeah, Madam Mayor, Steve, thanks so much for the presentation. You definitely have a lot in your shop. I had a couple of questions. First of all, I just want to make a quick comment as I'm really glad to see the workforce development that you're happening within your team. I think that's really critical to keep our team involved and also educated on what's happening. Question on the vulnerable population solar. I know it's a pretty small amount that we have investment there. Do we have a target program we're looking for that or can you provide some more information there?

Sure, Madam Mayor, Councilmember. We're looking at a couple of different options. One could be rooftop solar on individual homes. Another option could be rooftop solar on one of our larger housing units, kind of like, for example, the Vista housing. uh facility so not 100 sure on how exactly we'll we'll do that just yet those are some options that we're looking at in considerations the hope is that if we can add that the solar power to those facilities will reduce the electricity costs and be able to pass those savings on to within hcd to reduce overall cost of the programs so more to come i can probably find out a little more detail if you'd like

Okay. Great. Thank you. And then I want to talk real briefly on our rate increases. I know for water, we're talking about a 9.9% rate increase. And this is something that has been planned, I believe you said, since we did the bond renewal, right?

That's correct, Council Member.

Yeah. And that was back in, is it 22?

2021, the bond was passed. And then we, subsequent to that, starting in 2022, we had

very specific rates that we had committed to with uh with the community great so that was part of the bond renewal and part of foregoing knowing that we were going to still with all the projects we needed and the cost of projects we're still going to need these ongoing increases that's correct okay thank you uh last question um on the trash or waste rate increases um i think we have residentials 9.5 and commercial was six percent can you talk us through why the residential increases more than the commercial

Sure i'm an American Council member, as we go through a cost of service study. How every once while we try to rebalance how we're providing the cost for the service, and so we take our revenue that's coming in, we take a close look at the expenditures I you were the what are the costs to provide the service back to the Community. Over time, you'll see shifts in the actual cost to do that, whether there's higher population growth, whether there's more businesses coming on or businesses coming off. And so you'll see every once in a while that you need a correction to how those allocations are made to the various services we provide. And so one way to look at this in years previous, we were probably had a little bit of a overcharge, if you will, to the commercial customers and not in a malicious way. It's just looking back on the split out of cost of service. we had to make a correction on, okay, they're paying a little bit more for the services than the actual cost, so we need to make a correction to that. And so what you see on the slide, well, I went back, you'd see a higher number for residential. That's basically acknowledging that the cost breakout now suggests that we need to charge residential a little bit more than commercial to make up for that delta. so that it's equal cost for services across the customers.

Great. I'm glad to see that we're looking at that to making sure the right customers are paying the right fees for the right services. Thank you. And just not to answer today, but you'd mentioned we're completing about 2.3 miles per year for aging infrastructure, and we should be closer to the 10 miles a year, but would love to see what that's going to take to kind of get us there in the future.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And Madam Mayor, just to be clear, Steve, correct me if I'm wrong, the utility rate increased at about 9% utility increase. That was the decision that we made, a strategy that we approved a while ago. We could have increased it rapidly to about 25% all at once. But by kind of doing it further over time, we were able to spread that out a little more equitably so that the existing rate payers were paying for future rate payers for a couple of those years. Am I getting that right? That's correct. Yep.

Thank you, Director Burgos. I think that's all the questions for now. Appreciate the presentation and all the information. We'll next move on to Director Hupp with the airport update.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. All right, well, I'm excited to be here today to talk to you about our fiscal year 27. It's hard to believe that we're already in fiscal year 27. Building on some of the themes that you've heard already this morning, we are really, as the airport, we are also trying to keep up with growth, not only of Boise, but our entire valley and of the entire state. As was mentioned previously, The state has grown rapidly and Boise is the airport of choice for probably over 80% of the people who are visiting our state. And so what you'll see in our presentation today is the work that we've done so far to keep up with that growth and also what is coming and recognizing that when people fly into the Boise airport, we are their first impression of our community. We are their last impression. of our community when they leave, and also for our citizens who live here, where their connection to the world, and also, quite frankly, where many of their life-changing moments take place, whether they're welcoming a family member home or they're heading out on their first adventure. So we try to keep that in mind as we think about the work that we're doing every single day and as we think about the work that we're doing it's really divided into these key areas you know operations planning and construction leasing of our property making sure that we have the financial resiliency that we need to execute on the projects and then being a good community partner and outreach to our community Our top strategic priorities are, as you would imagine, investing in our infrastructure, ensuring smooth, safe operations, and investing in our people. And I'll talk a little bit more about those. So some of the infrastructure investments that you've seen recently and will see coming up are our consolidated rental car facility, which will open later this year. And then these other ones, the baggage handling system, the central utility plant, concourse A planning and design, all will be worked on over the next several years, as well as our master plan update, which is currently in process and is our 20-year plan for how we're going to build out our facilities. In terms of operations, we're looking at how do we operate better using our existing facilities. We have two new ARF trucks. We call it ARF. It's really aircraft rescue and firefighting, but that's too long to put in the presentation. We will be implementing a common use system, which is technology that we can use to allow an aircraft to use any gate or any aircraft to use some of our gates with the common use technology. And then we'll be using some new technology to streamline how we do gate assignments because as aircraft gates are constrained, making sure we use those resources to their greatest flexibility is important. And of course, as we're undertaking all of this, we can't do it without our people and our team. So we're really focused on making sure we have the right people and the right positions and that they have the right training to do the work that we need them to do and that they can continue to grow with us as we grow. And so we've actually had 17% of our people in the last year receive promotion. So really excited to be able to see our team continuing to grow as the airport grows. a little more detail on FY26 investments and impact. So as I mentioned, the master plan update is in process. That's usually about an 18 month process. Some of you serve on the technical advisory committee. Many members of our airport commission serve on our technical advisory committee. And this really is the plan that guides our 20-year plan for the airport. When we last updated this plan in 2018, many of the projects, in fact, nearly all of the projects that you're seeing today are the projects that were outlined in the last plan. So I often joke that our 20-year master plan becomes our five-year work plan. That seems to be the pace that we're moving at, but that is continuing to move forward In 26, another huge focus of 26, of course, has been the terminal design, looking at what does it take to bring on a new concourse with 10 new gates. It's not just the concourse, it's the baggage handling system, it's the central utility plant, but this is going to allow us to meet current and future growth. We've presented to this council on this a couple of times. And then again, common use technology. This is part of a broader IT master plan that we've been working on. How do we use technology to continue to move the airport forward and use technology to help us to be more effective and more efficient? And in terms of some of the construction that you are seeing today and investments in our capital, we have the consolidated rental car facility. That is a facility that the rental cars will use. It's adjacent to the terminal. It's within a walking distance. So no buses in Boise for the airport, at least. for rental cars and that will open in September. That was paid for by the rental cars and we issued revenue bonds for that backed by our customer facility charge so that our portion of that is complete. The car rental companies are in the process of building out their customer service spaces and the facility will actually open this fall. So Apron A phase two, we did Apron A phase one last year. This is the aircraft parking area on the south side of the future concourse A. This will allow us to tie into the future concourse, but also allows us to have additional aircraft parking spaces for what we like to call remain overnight or RON spaces. so that is active today and will be complete this year and then we also are in the process of reconstructing our runways this addresses some drainage issues and also just normal maintenance the expected lifespan of a runway is about 20 years we're at that point and so we're in the process of reconstructing our runways again this will be a multi-year pro project so you'll see that this year and next year When we look at FY27, some of the proposals, some of the things that we'll be working on is completing our master plan, as I mentioned. We're also going to be expanding services. So once we open the new car rental facility, we will be maintaining it on behalf of the car rentals. This will be revenue neutral. We will charge the car rentals for the services associated with that. as you can imagine with a 24 hour a day facility there's a number of positions to that we need to have to be able to maintain that and we want to make sure that we're maintaining it to our standard and what our citizens of boise expect from the airport and then the final there's more than this but the final large thing that i wanted to mention today is our financial planned and bond issuance we are in the midst of finalizing the financial plan and identifying the revenue sources part of that will be issuing bonds in fiscal year 27 will also be coming to the council for a letter of credit so that way a temporary letter of credit so that way we only have to bond one so there'll be some things that we're doing around financial planning that will be significant but it's not specifically a capital request in this budget In terms of capital requests and impact, I mentioned a couple of these. We have about $375 million worth of capital just this year. The roadway repairs, when you think about the terminal entrance roadway, we don't think of it as a bridge, but when you pause, the elevated roadway truly is a bridge. And so we will be repairing the entrance roadway, the entire roadway, including the elevated roadway portion, that will be on the calendar for fiscal year 27 we will continue with the runway reconstruction project and then we will begin very exciting the terminal construction on the baggage handling system central utility plant the arrivals and exit quarters and concourse a So these are projects that have been in the planning for over a year, and we will start to see them come to fruition in 27. And when I say come to fruition, I mean we will be beginning the process. You will see many of these projects continue over the next several years. So we have been in the planning phase. We are now entering the execution phase where you will see various portions of these future projects over the next several years. So I would be happy to stand for questions.

Madam Mayor. Councilmember Corliss. Rebecca, thank you so much. There is so much happening at the airport. I don't know how you handle all these projects that you have to be quite honest with you.

You've got a good team, looks like. We have an amazing team.

Quick question. Just on some of these, just so people have expectations, when we talk about we're now, we moved from the planning stage and now we're in the execution phase of these projects. Are these two-year projects, five-year projects?

Can you give us kind of an estimation? These, I would say, we're expecting, we're hoping to be complete in 2030 is the goal. So these projects are phased over time. So there's a certain order. We can't do them all at once. And so many of the things need to be completed before we can begin the next process. And so I would anticipate a completion in 2030. Thank you.

Thank you, Director. I think that's all we've got for now. Thank you. Appreciate the work. And now we're on to Chief Dennison with the Boise Police Department.

Morning, Madam Mayor, members of council, Chris Dennison, Chief of Police. And I know I was here two weeks ago talking about some of the needs for public safety. So I will jump into our top strategic priorities for the PD. We've made some changes to our patrol deployment model, which became effective in March of this year. The goal was to align our times of patrol, times of deployment for patrol officers based on data providing the greatest need and coverage for officers. This includes not just 911 calls for service, but when traffic collisions are occurring, when we want to see traffic enforcement to drive those collisions down. This new model allows for greater cadence within our training, allowing our teams to train together, building that team and unit cohesion. We also made investments in the area of domestic violence investigation, special victims investigations, fraud and juvenile crimes in 26, and I will get into some of those impacts shortly. Workforce stabilization continues for us. Bpd has been in position hasn't been for years that we're at or near full staffing for sworn personnel, and we want to maintain that. So continuing our recruitment strategies, we are making investments and taking care of our people in areas such as increased supervision, training support stuff. This includes the addition of the ranked corporate program to add greater supervision and resources to our patrol officers. the aforementioned training cadence, also the expanded use of less lethal systems to include the pepper ball launchers and the new Taser 10 system. We've recently self-solved and added professional staff into the areas of our criminal investigations division to support investigations in that area, as well as moving the CSO to the training division. to coordinate as a coordinator in the area of wellness and building community service officer specific training. And then two weeks ago, I spoke about our investment within wellness. This continues to be a focus not only for myself and my command team, but I know for Chief Hummel and his team as well. Based on the budget allotted for FY26, BPD was able to expand or create the following positions, and I'll delve just briefly into some of the community impacts. We added a DV detective, increasing our DV detective staff from one to two. This has expanded our capabilities in these investigations, allowing personnel to more effectively investigate, follow up, and resolve cases in a timely fashion to support victims and hold offenders accountable. We're a lot of one fraud detective position, which has been filled again, expanding our investigative capacity in that area over the last two years, the Boise Police Department has received over 1400 cases involving fraud. And again, with the special victims detective position, that position will actually be filled next week. This will expand our investigative capability. They're allowing for a greater or quicker case resolution and expanding our team in that area from nine detectives to 10. The juvenile crimes detective position, we were able to fund that this year. In FY26, the team became fully operational toward the end of calendar 25 year to date that team has handled 242 cases and some of the feed one of the things we were looking at was allowing our SROs to remain in schools and not being pulled away to follow up on on crimes and reports and what we've heard from the district is that they believe the SROs are now more effective having more time to build trust with students and it was relayed to us from the boys school district has been a very different experience from years past with our SROs. Our technology optimization continues. We've added the Peregrine system, which allows for better access and collating of data. We've seen resolutions and officers and detectives being able to put cases together quickly. This also allows information at the fingertips of our officers. They have it on their mobile computers as well as their phones. Investments were made into the Axon ecosystem. This includes the The advanced Leslie will lethal taser system virtual reality training equipment and will be moving to a modern records management system with unlimited data storage these improvements will enhance both not only officer and public safety but streamline workflows improving data management. The taser 10 systems were fully deployed this year received in January and we've already started deploying the virtual reality training systems. Moving into the operational proposals and impact for the Boise Police Department 27. FY27, BPD is gonna be focused pretty heavily on the implementation of the new Axon records management system or report writing systems. This will be a huge lift for us and it'll be changing how BPD operates in this space. So it'll be a significant workflow change for the department. We anticipate having the records management system or report writing system online by summer of next year. As we get into some of our operating costs, we continue to manage overtime as demands increase in the areas of special events and public demonstrations. The requested increase of $800,000 will help align BPD's personnel budget, accounting for the fact that we continue to be at or near full staffing. When we look at the request for the 800,000 professional service agreements, we've seen increases across the board in this area. Highlight two is the public and evidence housing that's done by the Ada County Sheriff's Department, as well as inmate housing at the jail have both seen increases. And then the 301,000 technology optimization that's going to support some of the legacy systems will need to maintain through the summer of next year as we onboard as we move completely into the axon ecosystem. And then some of that will also support critical investigative needs thinking about some of the cell phone extraction tools that we have and the financial crime mapping that was budgeted for bpd and fyi 26. As I spoke two weeks ago that we are wrapping up the facility strategic plan, anticipating returning with public works in late summer to present to mayor and council on that. The 8.1 million for requests for technology optimization, that again is gonna be the payment portion for the Axon record system as well as a new digital evidence management system and a new LIMS or laboratory information management system for our crime lab. And then the major equipment request the 2.8 million that's just life of cycle for our police cars, our motorcycles, some of our mobile mobile data computers that are inside each one of those vehicles. And with that I'll stand for any questions.

Just a comment and a request. Appreciate the continued investment in mental health and holistic wellness for all the folks, both at police and fire. Your two departments have always kind of been leading the way, I think, at the city as far as the way that we take care of people in that holistic way. And I would just ask that you continue to explore ways to share any sort of learnings that you're pulling from there that might have a positive impact on some of our other departments. A good example might be, I think you all invested in a really large, like, sleep analysis study, helping your officers and folks sleep a little bit better, those same learnings could probably apply to some of our other departments as well. So I would just ask that you continue to learn and share as appropriate what might have a positive impact on some of our other departments. um and then oh shoot what was the second thing oh i i don't know if you have this information available already but at some point it'd be nice if we could figure out how much of the crime that you're responding to whether it's traffic infractions or arrests are actually related to growth from the surrounding areas so if somebody's getting a traffic infraction but they're from eagle and they're speeding on a street in boise kind of knowing what the growth in the valley is actually impacting our police department I just find that so interesting because I know that when we look at growth around the area, the city of Boise is growing a little bit, but our surrounding areas are growing a lot. And I know that that's putting a strain on you all. And so it'd be nice to be able to figure out a little bit of what that impact is. I don't know exactly what we would do with that information, but it would be helpful to know what kind of demographics you're responding to outside the city of Boise.

Madam Mayor.

Chief Dennison, thank you so much for being here. A lot of great things coming in the department. I really appreciate the investment in the non-lethal tools and training that you're providing the officers. I think we're seeing the impact of that in the community. Quick question. We talked about our domestic violence detectives. We increased from one to two. If we look forward, can you give an estimate of how many do you think that we will need?

Madam Mayor, Council Member Tim Corliss, We track that just based on the demand that's going to occur. So right now, based on where we're at, we're pretty comfortable. Our DV detectives are currently handling all felony cases and high level misdemeanors. So maybe those assault batteries that don't result to a felony case, but that we want to do the follow up on. We're pretty comfortable right now where we're at with two detectives. But as we continue to see growth specifically in Boise or in the Treasure Valley area, that may change.

um so it's really hard to predict we constantly are trying to map out where we think crime is going to increase and where we need to put the resources but right now we're pretty comfortable where we're at right one final question um as we see an increase in online crimes um and do we feel like we have the appropriate number of people to help solve those in the technology i know it can be really complex um as we're seeing a lot of reports from citizens that are you know getting requests for money that are not the correct agencies. We need to investigate those. How do we see that? Do we see that continuing to escalate going forward? And do we have the right people, the right number of people and tools

help combat that madam mayor councilman corliss yeah those are very much a concern for us i anticipate those crimes increasing uh continuing to increase especially as we see artificial intelligence starting to play a role in that which we already are we have made investments uh with your guys um approval and funding requests with the with the financial crime mapping that gives us the ability to track cryptocurrency which is something that's notoriously difficult to do um and then we did add the additional financial crimes fraud detective in that um within the team uh that position came online just a couple months ago so we'll continue to evaluate the impacts of adding that personnel some of the things that we'll be looking at in the future is going to be technology tools that help just expand our ability to do that and be more effective with the personnel we have so we're continuing to look at what's coming out in the criminal justice realm that will help us do it and we may be coming back in the future with requests to help do that great thank you madam mayor

Thank you. Hey, Chief, first shout out on the way in today had a Motors officer that had managed to pull over two vehicles at the same time on Federal Way. So when the mayor talks about, you know, really increasing the effort two at a time, that's pretty awesome. I've got a comment and then a question. So I would just echo Council Member Halliburton's points about non-resident demand on public safety. And so I think this is an area that I am very concerned about. When we look at our general fund budget, we look at 8% coming from sales tax, and we look at the sales tax formula that really perpetually constricts Boise's ability to grow our sales tax revenue while outlying communities can at a higher rate. I just am more and more concerned about the impacts that we're having serving a larger region growing faster than ourselves in public safety. So I think that really does need to be communicated in a way that helps us to be able to ensure that we're funding those services adequately for the whole valley. But my question relates to over time, just wanted to see if you could give just to kind of catch me up. I think the general kind of information over the last handful of years. We've looked at overtime, vacancies, as vacancies fill, overtime reduces. Can you tell us kind of that overtime rate, what that's looked like? Generally, I'm assuming it's coming down or is this kind of an acknowledgement of just structurally needing that overtime because of the nature of this work? And are we also factoring in like future Percy costs into this budget item and that kind of stuff?

Madam Mayor, Council Member Rallis, Yes, there is a component of police work that will always require overtime for just call out extended duty for officers, late arrests, and then if we're calling out our special operations teams. We have seen an increased demand when we're looking at our, again, our special events and our First Amendment related activities and ensuring that we have police resources out there. So we are trying to track and manage overtime as effectively as possible. That was one of the pushes for realigning the patrol deployment schedules was making sure we're putting off as many officers in the field when we needed them the most to reduce the need to call officers in or that extended duty. um we had our first full month of that we saw a decrease in about a thousand hours of anticipated overtime i i don't know if that's going to continue we're going to continue to monitor that we're trying to look at ways we can streamline so that is definitely a concern of ours um yes percy costs are always a concern knowing when we look at employees not just the hours that fully loaded cost um for uh for those increases so uh and we just did a look at our overtime budget We do anticipate being over in our allotted overtime budgets, where I think this request for the additional 800,000 will help us try to stabilize that and some of our personnel costs will continue to try to effectively manage that as best we can. yeah.

Thank you chief, maybe I just flag it might be an Alicia question something we can get back to later in terms of that budget impact of this additional 100,000 on that ongoing costs for to Percy thanks.

All right. Next up, Chief Hummel.

Madam Mayor, Council, good morning. Aaron Hummel, Fire Chief. Well, for us, I'll start with our strategic priorities. Response, evolution, workforce stabilization, capital planning and investment. and employee wellness. When I talk about those, we talk response evolution. You'll see for this budget request, it really is running the business for FHIR. We're not asking for any additional people, but we are self-reflecting and looking at what things we can do with the existing resources we have to be able to enhance what we do. We're working with 80 County Paratomatix and our access partners to look at any capacity or enhancements we can do with that service. just through cooperation and collaborative efforts. We're also researching the possibility of being able to improve our medical response to advance life support at the terminal for the airport, just looking at what we can do with our existing staff to be able to make that happen. So we're looking into that. We're also looking at our automatic mutual aid agreements, making sure those are shored up, protecting the city's liability. When we talk about workforce stabilization, of course, we're fortunate in that we do tend to recruit a lot of people that want to come to our business, but we want to maintain our staffing and our standards at the high level that we have today. And as I mentioned a little bit ago, efficiently deploying the resources, we have seen the impact of our growing valley with the usage and the river and the foothills, a lot of the things that we treasure here about the city, we definitely feel an impact from people in the valley. So we're just trying to be efficient in how we deploy those resources so we don't have any service reductions associated with that. And as was mentioned earlier by Chief Dennison and echoed as priorities for Councilmember Halliburton and Morales, employee wellness is very important to us. It's a long haul, 25 to 30 year career typically. And so we're really trying to engage our employees at new hire and prepare them for the difficulties of the career all the way through into retirement. We talk about capital investment and planning. We have a solid plan and of course we work with the city's capital investment plan to make sure that our facilities and equipment are up to speed and reliable. And I already talked about wellness. For 26, we did replace two fire engines and we have six staff vehicles on order and one watercraft. For 27, like I said, it's really run the business for us. We do have our portable radios are reaching the end of life cycle. So we are putting in for an assistance to firefighters grant. It is a match that we have to pay about 320,000. We're partnering with other fire departments throughout the valley to maximize our chances of getting this grant. But having these new radios will not only address the issue of end of service life, but also allows us to have encryption in the radio for better privacy, and especially in our operations with police. We do have about 5.7 million in new requests for three additional engines, our heavy rescue vehicle, three battalion chief vehicles, and four additional staff vehicles. what we really uh what we're really asking for outside of um the major capital for this budget is you know costs we can't necessarily control m o costs like increases and the cost of hydrostatically testing our hoses to make sure they're they're not going to rupture on the fire ground medical supply increases uh meeting standard with the protective hoods that our firefighters wear and then also funding the trauma intervention program for both police and fire which really is designed to support our residents facing trauma on those scenes so that we can provide you know some volunteers that do a little emotional first aid so we don't just leave someone after they experienced a traumatic event we did have some increased costs for our medical directors and qa quality assurance quality improvement aspect of our medical joint powers agreement that increased and then our medical provider contract with emergency responders health clinic for our department physicals As was mentioned earlier, we are putting in for a safer grant, which is to further that four person engine priority, which is really designed to try to meet the NFPA standard as well as the American Heart Association recommendations. This would be for three fire engines to upgrade from three personnel to four. It is a cost sharing grant for the first three years, and then year four, the city would assume full cost. And as Alicia mentioned, you know, we're still identifying the funding approach beyond fiscal year 2030. So with that, pretty brief, but I'll stand for any questions you might have.

Madam Mayor, just real quick. So if you were able to get that safer grant and you were able to get those three new stations, which stations do you know they would be?

Yeah, Madam Mayor, Councilmember Halliburton. We have a pretty complex matrix. We've looked at a variety of different factors. To answer your question, the first one would be downtown, Engine 5, 16th and Front. The second one would be next to Bishop Kelly High School in Franklin. That's Station 6. And the third one would be southwest Boise, Engine 14, five miles just north of Victory. Perfect. Thank you.

Madam Mayor. Chief Hummel, thank you so much for the presentation. and kind of continue on with the safer grant question. If we were to get that grant, what fiscal year would we see personnel brought online? Would that be 28 or 29?

uh madam mayor uh council pro tem corliss if we got approved i believe it would be for the next budget year but there's obviously going to be some latency by the time we bring people on board and then we have that about four month turnaround time we put them through the academy so it wouldn't be until next calendar year that we'd see them i'll look at my cao to verify that though yeah right right

And then one final question is, Madam Mayor, Chief Hummel, on the grant that we're looking at for replacement of the radios, do we know when we're going to have that response from that grant?

Madam Mayor, Council Pro Tem, Corliss, we just got the, what's called a NOFO, I think yesterday. Just released? Yeah, just releasing it. So we have the city's grants team and our folks are putting our best foot forward. So I think we find out in, is it June, July? Summer of first. Okay, end of the summer be first to work.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks. All right, Maureen. Welcome up.

Thanks, Mayor and Council. Maureen Brewer, PDS Director. This is my first time with you in this capacity, so looking forward to it. As you know, PDS provides a wide range of services, including planning, both current and long range, our Housing and Community Development Division, our Building Division that ensures safe and durable buildings, We provide community compliance services and then are really focused on customer service and the experience of our applicants. So top strategic priorities then, these are likely efforts that are familiar to all of you. One is to increase housing affordability. Two, again, enhance our customer experience. And then three, guide growth consistent with Boise's vision. So for the first one related to housing affordability, we continue to make investments in affordable housing, both new construction and the preservation of existing housing. And then we're also continuing to partner to move people out of homelessness and into permanent housing. as far as the customer experience is concerned we are really intentionally seeking ways and kind of a multi-faceted effort to enhance the customer experience this includes some of the items council approved by a pretty major ibc from earlier this year if you remember that included new staff it included budget to update our design review guidelines it included increased budget for outsource plan review, and then also included a web page redesign that our customers have been asking for. And then we are also charged with guiding growth in such a way that moves the city toward the really the embodiment of our vision. We do that through a whole host of efforts. This includes updates to our relatively new code to support clear and consistent implementation of the zoning code. We do this through our pathways program to expand connectivity across the city and then also in long range planning efforts where we are currently planning for the potential growth in three specific potential areas. So in terms of FY26 investments and impact, these include major progress on our pipeline of affordable housing projects via gap financing. These 700 or so affordable units that are mentioned here include about a $20 million investment from the city in both local and federal funds. And that $20 million is leveraging well over $200 million in other financing and fund sources. And then also continuing to invest in mobility and pathways via providing the local match required to leverage federal funds to get those pathways constructed. And then again, primarily via the IBC from earlier this year, we have been better positioned recently to at least maintain our service delivery timelines and then also to enhance or provide more clear guidelines to increase predictability and certainty for the customers we serve. In terms of capital investments then for FY26, major capital projects for our department this year have included a lot of progress on 8th Street, Lusk, and then also the Sherwood. again as you all are well aware after a significant amount of design work and collaboration and outreach to stakeholders 8th street is now under construction the lusk street redevelopment expects to break ground before the end of the fiscal year that project received design approval last week and has largely assembled financing so that's a major step forward towards breaking ground and then we are also expecting demolition on the Sherwood to commence most likely within the month. So if we move then into FY27 proposals and anticipated impact, as far as program support is concerned, we are really looking forward to updating our historic preservation guidelines. An update to the historic plan is underway now. We expect that plan to be completed by the end of the fiscal year and then intend to move into an update of the guidelines from there. We are also continuing to sustain efforts to house households that are exiting homelessness, including shoring up a new coordinated entry lead agency, which is a major achievement for our Path Home. And then we are also requesting a $200,000 increase to the Pathways-based budget. This would provide for us a total base budget of $700,000 to support the continued implementation of the Pathways Master Plan and also leverage federal funds. And then finally, at least within this category, we are requesting a revenue supported budget increase for parking operations. And then in terms of service delivery, we plan to continue to outsource at least some plan review to keep projects moving in a timely fashion. And then we are also ready to move forward on redesigning our department's physical space on the second floor to increase functionality, increase accessibility, and enhance both staff safety and the customer experience. And then finally, this is my last slide. I just want to take a minute here to make sure that I flag or speak to this interim step that we are proposing to take this year to align development fees with the zoning code. So this is really one of our final steps to realize full implementation of the code. We are recommending a 3.5% fee increase across the board. and then have targeted what amounts to a handful of fees that are either new or would increase more than 3.5% to better reflect the effort and complexity and therefore cost of service. What I do want to note here though for Council particularly is that we have work to do with our partners in finance and public works and with mayor and council related to policy setting as far as the city's approach to how and when and really to what degree we intend to update our fee schedules we had a recently completed fee study which was a comprehensive study of the cost of service that we haven't done in many years and that study found that cost recovery continues to erode even though our revenues are at a historic high because of a few high value projects. So then just to conclude, really the theme for PDS, similar to my colleagues, is to zero in on our strategy to invest development fees back into the services for which those fees pay and do so in partnership with city leadership. And then to continue to really execute on projects, specifically on housing projects and on pathways projects. And then I've mentioned this a handful of times, but to focus particular effort on continuing to enhance the customer experience within PDS. Happy to answer any questions.

Madam Mayor, Maureen, thank you very much for being here and going through the presentation with us. A couple of really quick questions. We talked about we're outsourcing some plan reviews. Are these in a certain area?

Madam Mayor, Council Pro Tem Corliss, yes. And I can get back to you specifically on what those specific areas are. But we do target specific areas where it would be beneficial so that we can maintain our service targets and timelines.

Right. And for those, are we having still internal contact, I assume, within the city?

Madam Mayor, Council Pro Tem Corliss, yes.

Madam Mayor, one last question. For the $2 million redesign on the second floor, is that also part for housing new people that are coming into the department, additional staff?

Madam Mayor, Council Pro Tem Corliss, certainly it will account for any additional FTE. Yes. Okay, great. Thank you.

Hi, Maureen, quick question. I know you and I have talked about kind of additional support for small businesses working through the chapter 11, chapter 1, title 3 processes. Is that something we can look forward to in the fiscal 27 planning year, or is that, are you shifting around current, like, can you tell me a little bit more about when we might be able to see that come through?

madam mayor council president good question uh certainly our department shares that priority in terms of making sure that we have really it's a project management service to help small businesses navigate both the planning and permitting process we did not ask for an fte specifically for that function for fy27 that being said we did add um We did add an interim position, a two-year position to our project management team via that IBC from earlier this year. So what we'd like to do is twofold. One, see what kind of capacity we have between our affordable housing projects and sort of large complex projects that receive project management. What kind of capacity we have now that we've added capacity to that project management team. And then two, take under consideration what might amount to a recommendation to add an FTE to that project management team after we have this policy discussion with council related to fees, how we're going to approach those fees, and really the financial sustainability of the department and how many staff we can support. So long-winded way of saying TBD, but we're working on a short-term and longer-term solution. Great. Thanks so much.

And then Mayor. Maureen, congratulations on your first presentation as director to council. Great job. So excited to see the stuff at Capital Campus and Sherwood continuing to move along. Again, this has been such a long time discussion for multiple councils, multiple mayors, and actually getting to see this come to fruition is so exciting. And I'm excited to see that $200,000 request to the base for the Pathways Plan as well. Can you talk a little bit about how that investment might actually spur additional funds, whether it's through federal funding, grant funding, those types of things with that base increase.

Madam Mayor, Councilmember Halliburton, I can give you a sort of broad answer today and then would love to follow up, but that base budget and therefore that base budget increase helps us move faster on sort of that pre-work, including design and pre-construction and even outreach, and then also helps position us to leverage, as you mentioned, additional federal grant funds that actually help pay for the construction of those pathways. So I can get some more specifics as is helpful, but that's what I can offer.

That's helpful and more information would be great too. I think that so many of our Pathways projects are spurred through federal grant funds that sometimes require that match or that additional work. If those opportunities that are out there and available, we definitely want to make sure that we're pursuing those the best we can. Not for this year's budget, but something I think to be thinking about even for next year would be any sort of technologies that we could be looking at investing in. um that would increase the speed and that we're able to process some of our development applications and then also giving our staff the more flexibility that they need to actually get out in the field and look at some of these specific um you know whether it's a sidewalk request or whatever it may be to really kind of get out there on the ground to address some of the nuances that the code doesn't always capture. And so we'd love to see what type of technology we could be looking at that would increase their flexibility to actually get out there and make some more nuanced decisions. And your team's already doing a great job of incorporating a lot of that flexibility. So thank you.

Madam Mayor council member holly Burton noted and will also just say that more to come on those technical enhancements or technological enhancements we're working closely with Alex and it and what that their roadmap looks like in alignment with sort of our priorities to go faster.

All right, next up we've got Jamie Sullivan with legal.

Just realized I forgot my glasses. So we're gonna roll here. Oh, there we go. Madam Mayor and members of council, my name is Jamie Sullivan. I'm the Boise City Attorney, and I'm here to provide an update on the legal department and provide some information regarding the impact of your investments as we continue to support the city as it grows and as it thrives. As you know, you don't often see legal on this side of the dais, but that doesn't mean we're not active in the courtroom and behind the scenes. And as you know, there are three main central divisions in legal that supports the needs of the city. And first, we have the municipal division. It serves the city throughout all of the departments, internal and external facing alike. from IT and HR to airport and parks. It also supports mayoral and council initiatives, as well as city boards and commissions and intergovernmental support, even when the legislature is out for a session. Then we have the Public Safety Division. It supports Boise police and fire and their endeavors to keep our community safe, as well as providing litigation support and advice in state and federal courts alike. And finally, there's the largest division, the Criminal Division. We prosecute misdemeanor and infraction cases for the City of Meridian, the City of Boise, as well as conflict felony cases throughout the Treasure Valley. So I'd like to go over some of the approaches Legal has implemented in order to maximize on your previous investments in our department. With respect to people, as a department, we are really focused on recruitment and retention of employees. We've encouraged training opportunities for all staff, not just the attorneys. We're really active in career fairs and have been hosting internships on the criminal and the municipal side. And I have to say it's really working. We're getting a lot of interest of the interns applying for entry level positions in our department. So it's really nice to see that turnover. If you focus on process, we've also been focused on standardization and maximization of efficiencies between public records review for interdepartmental requests, updated litigation holds, an internal discovery process. We've been going through all of those matters on a regular cadence. And the use of your previous investment in legal at the case management system has really been crucial in our endeavors to do that. And finally, with respect to assets, legal alongside IT, clerks, and BPD have been marching forward in an implementation of a new public records system. A new system and a new platform will benefit the community and staff alike by ensuring consistency, efficiency, and regulatory compliance. The citywide initiative will further the city's commitment to support the public's right to be informed of the city's business. and it will also provide an enhanced user experience with faster response times greater transparency and ease of use with respect to staff they'll also benefit with increased efficiency from technologies and a reduction in staff time So now that we've talked about the investments of the past, let's talk about the return on those investments. So the criminal division ensured that our community was safe by prosecuting just over 6,500 cases for the city of Boise last year in 51 jury trials. We also gave back to the community by collaborating with the University of Idaho College of Law, and again, hosting interns by giving them boots on the ground experience and training that will serve them as they serve our community in the future. With respect to the municipal division, boy, over 130 public meetings, 600 resolutions, over 30 ordinances. Look at all those public records from interdepartmental requests. And again, as the external departments that you hear from today, as they celebrate their accomplishments from strides towards 10-minute walks to parks and innovative affordable housing projects, legal shares of those successes by providing solid and practical legal guidance and strategic support throughout the city. With respect to the Public Safety Division, we continue to provide civil litigation support across all city departments. The division also provides pre-litigation support to risk and safety in an effort to mitigate loss and evaluate claims before they become lawsuits. This early intervention provides a more mature approach to resource preservation. And that takes us to legal's FY27 request to invest in people to keep up with the expanded courtroom responsibilities in the criminal division. So in November, 2025, Ada County Courts implemented a different approach to caseload equalization. They evaluated all of the numerous competing equities in the courtroom. got interpreters, the jail, prosecuting agencies, public defense, private counsel, and judicial dockets. And they decided to divide all criminal matters equally between the 10 misdemeanor courtrooms. So Boise City responded. We shifted resources to keep up with the additional courtroom responsibilities. However, over the last nine months, experience has shown that in order to keep up with that caseload and those additional responsibilities, senior management's ability to run the business, screen potential cases, mentor and train staff, tutor interns, manage calendars, balance with the attention to the most serious crimes, including vehicular manslaughter, has been strained. The addition of these positions will allow the department to leverage the expertise and experience of management while also providing an opportunity for newer attorneys to get boots on the ground experience all while being a critical member of protecting our community. So as our community grows, so does the complexity and number of legal matters that confront the city. So simply put, we need to grow the division to keep up with the needs of the city. So, again, thank you for your time and attention here today. We truly appreciate your continued support, which enables us to in turn support the city moving forward. And with that, I'll stand for any questions.

And Amir, maybe just a comment and you can clarify if I'm wrong on all this, but also thank you. I want to thank the team for pinch hitting and covering the additional load at our county courthouse. And I want to thank you for all the follow up since our meeting in March had questions about this. I think my perspective is that it's kind of an unfunded mandate because the state didn't fund the courts properly to be able to increase the judges in that courthouse and has kind of caused this shifting of of needs and so i but i appreciate your team sticking it out trying it out and um helping build this case for for needing these additional positions thank you

Yeah, Madam Mayor, just a quick comment. Just thank you. I appreciate you bringing up some of the behind the scenes work that you do to support all the different departments and even our council members up here as we have different ideas or hear different ideas from the community. And then how we're actually able to translate out those into action. And a lot of that involves going to legal and figuring out how we can do it in a way that actually makes sense as legal and mitigates risk. So thanks for all that behind the scenes work.

Thank you. Okay, thank you.

yeah we're a little ahead of schedule i think so we are going to take a five-ish minute break for everybody see you back in a moment oh wait did you have a question no all right

Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

That's where my voice comes from. That's where my voice comes from. That's where my voice comes from. That's where my voice comes from. I mean, it's all regular. Yeah, I don't think so. It's not. But I think you might see it. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. Thank you. Thank you. um um

Thank you.

All right, OK. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Yes, we are. Yes, we are. Yes, we are. um um Oh, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yep, you got it. All right. Yes. Yes. Yes. um um I'm sorry. you know um i don't know

All righty, we're going to go ahead and get started again. We've got Maria Wigg on deck with community engagement. And we're just down one, so we will go ahead and get started.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, council members. Like Maureen, this is my first time in front of you. In this capacity, my name's Maria Weig, I'm the Director of Community Engagement. um typically the offices don't present at this budget workshop but given the substantial investments that you have made in community engagement and the deep partnership that we have with all of the departments across the city particularly the operational departments I asked to be put on deck for this particular budget workshop so I'm glad that we're doing well on time I don't feel quite as guilty about taking up some space um in addition to that I did not get a chance to practice with my colleagues next week and learn from all of their wisdom I had jury duty so uh excuse me if I'm if I'm not quite as polished as the as the rest of them so the office of community engagement There we go. We like to say that we inform, inspire and engage our residents. And most of us think we have the coolest jobs in the city because our job essentially is to brag about and tell the stories of all of the incredible work that happens in all of the departments throughout the city. There's always something happening and our residents deserve to know about it. They deserve to know what we're doing, why we're doing it, how it impacts them, and if they're going to need to make any changes to get the best that they can out of the city that serves them. So we are organized into essentially sort of four divisions, not necessarily as discreet as you would find in some other departments. There's a lot of overlap. Our creative services department is our graphics and web team, our PowerPoint prowess. and events and outreach also happens under creative services. Digital engagement is our website, our social media presence, any digital engagement tools that we have, our external newsletters, surveys run through digital engagement, and our marketing team works under that division as well. communications and media relations so this is all of our earned media media relations press releases come through this and then engagement and outreach so you'll find all of our sort of specialty outreach neighborhood associations language access community accessibility and then the work that we do with the departments when we're doing engagement to get feedback from the community on city projects and impacts So our top strategic priorities are clear and transparent communications. We work really hard to translate the work of the city into people-centered language. I talk a lot about thinking about my mother-in-law in my pocket and how can I explain something to her in the one to two sentences that I will have that help her understand what the city's doing and how it might impact her. So she typically doesn't use words like alignment, and some of the other governmental words that we use, right? So we work really hard to do that and translate that and also make it easier for the media to tell those stories as well. We know that their job is essentially the same as our job in many cases. So we try to put out communications and information in a way that gives the media what they need to be able to effectively report on what the city is doing. We think it's the right thing to do to be very transparent. We also know that it builds trust with the community and they're who we're here to serve and so they deserve our attention to building that trust. So if you think about some of the capacity that goes into that, I wanted to share with you. We processed almost 1,700 graphic design requests. That can be anything from changing letterhead when we get a new director so that it's ready to go on day one, to doing an entire branding campaign or branding refresh. We just did a branding refresh for the library. So it's a wide range of things, and it has grown exponentially in the 10 years that we've been sort of in business at the city. Similarly with the website, we've processed 2,800 in a fiscal year web requests. Again, anything from adding a dot or a dash or a period that might have been a typo in a press release or something to doing a full website rebuild. We have about 5 million web visits every calendar year, and that's just to the City of Boise account that does an account library. airport and some of our like James Castle House, some of those external websites that we still also manage. And then the publicity value is generally around $15 million a year from our earned media. We track that through some software just so that we can see what it would cost us if we weren't providing these services internally. And that's just the publicity value. So that doesn't include what we would be paying for graphic support, web support if we were doing all of that externally. Engagement for community impact, that is really inviting residents into the decisions that impact their lives. So think about what we've been doing around Keep Boise Cool, the zoning code, the water renewal plan, which has informed what Public Works has been working on. It is a way to really engage residents early and make changes that oftentimes make programs and outcomes better and incorporate our residents and the folks who are really living with the decisions that get made in this building connected to the work that we're doing. and then enhancing community experience i'm always excited when to hear someone like maureen talk about community experience because we believe really really strongly it shouldn't be difficult to interact with the government that serves you so that is we use a hub and spoke model we have a lot of things internal to community engagement constituent services language access accessibility to support the work and connect and connect folks so they can get what they need from the government they serve so some of what we do is really planned And like 8th Street, the work that we're doing around 8th Street during their construction projects to do good wayfinding and good branding and good communication to the community so they know what to expect. Partnering with the mayor's office on support for the small businesses on 8th Street, the utility billing, software change. We were able to plan for that and do some really good communications, direct and focused with utility billing customers as well as the community at large, so they knew what to expect when the software changed over. And Summit is very emergent. We try to keep enough time open that we can really take care of problems as they come up. So think about rats and turkeys, for example. You all start hearing from your constituents about something that is happening, and we're able to jump in and work with you to make sure things are going well. So our FY26 investments and impact. We came to you about a year ago, a little over a year ago, with an IBC for a full-time two-year temporary FTE to help us meet our digital accessibility requirements from the federal government. The great news is we are on track. They extended the deadline by about a year, which was fantastic and somewhat anticipated because the federal government's digital presence and it was difficult to imagine they were gonna meet their own deadline. So with that, because we're touching all of the web pages, we're also doing a lot of great work to enhance the user experience of the website. So partnering with PDS and others on some re-architecturing the website to maximize user experience, fewer clicks, for example, to get to where you need to go. So our digital accessibility will impact the disability community very specifically, but really every digital visitor, because what we find is when we make accessibility upgrades in any kind of way, whether they're physical or digital, it really does end up benefiting everyone at large. The city wide newsletter I think that you all have continued to invest in for the past couple of fiscal years and we send that four times a year to 108,000 households around the city it's a very cool tool. It allows us to really present and provide in people's mailboxes some more evergreen content. So between the council member message and the mayor message, that's where the timely information happens. And then we try to include information that is either a little bit of a deeper dive into a big community project. or evergreen material, phone numbers that you might need that you want to put on a magnet on your refrigerator so that you know who to call for what when, the dates that all of our America 250 activities were going to have and what we were doing around that. So that's been a neat tool. And every time it hits mailboxes, I think you all hear and we all hear from residents who get it and say, oh, yeah, that was really cool. And then Energizer Neighborhoods, you have a consistent investment every year in the neighborhood improvement program, which provides grants at the very neighborhood level on enhancements to improve every neighborhood across the city. in fiscal year 26 we did a couple of things we made improvements to our block party trailer i cannot tell you how popular that trailer is um it is booked up every weekend of the season and um and and i know if we if we had to we would be able to use two and the community just loves it and the team makes sure every year to add some different amenities um to make it even better so yard games coolers anything that you would need to hold um hold a block party. And we've worked the last couple of years on Open Streets, which is an event that highlights what you can do on a street if it is temporarily closed to vehicle traffic. And we're having another one this year on Catalpa. So for FY27 operating proposals and impact, we don't have a lot of asks this year. We do have a temp budget increase of about $50,000. We've been funding some temporary support out of our M&O for the past couple of years, and it's become evident that that is really an ongoing need. So the biggest piece of that is for a part-time graphic designer. we are hoping to be able to move that to full-time as soon as we can kind of figure out how to self-solve for that. To give you just an idea, the number of graphic design requests we have gotten has increased by about 200%. We have the same number of graphic designers that we had when we started as a baby department in 2017. So the graphic design work has really increased exponentially, I think in great part to the talent of the team. I know several years ago, the airport stopped outsourcing a lot of their graphic design because they were happier with what they were getting internally. So it's a good way to both save departments money on going to outside firms. And we just have, I think, really great stuff. So that will support that. We're still working on the website refresh and accessibility upgrades that you invested in. That is ongoing, and we believe we will have that done. I'm going to knock on something so that I don't give our web diva a heart attack, but in about a year, we should have all of that done and to fruition. um we i'm excited to start exploring some additional digital engagement tools we've really dialed in on trying to get further into the neighborhoods to talk to people like going where people are rather than asking people to always come from us and i think that that's like our last step in maturing that process is finding some additional additional ways to engage folks through some digital tools and then i think finally for fy27 although we'll start in fy26 the city hall in your neighborhood uh the mayor talked about this in her state of the city address and um so we just have a small group together getting together to start thinking through what that will look like But think about a resource fair at places that are other than City Hall, and we'd also like to explore fairly quickly. So some of the directors will be hearing from us soon about whether or not there are any services that we can provide when we do this. So we're thinking about the very far edges of the city right so. perhaps the watershed maple grove elementary fire station 13 if it could accommodate it like we're still dialing in on where the exact facilities would be but the idea is to get as far from city hall as we can and offer residents an opportunity to come for a day meet directors learn about city things potentially get a library card and sign up for other kind of city programs and services but just as a way of being further out into the community instead of always asking people to come here and i think with that i will stand for questions

Just a quick comment. Thanks so much, Maria. I just wanted to thank you and your staff and the mayor for partnering with our office on the expansion of our communication correspondence and the digital and printed newsletters. Those have been a big hit, as you mentioned, and I'm grateful that that priority of the council was able to be met. Thank you so much for that.

Matt, Mayor, I just want to tack on to that as well. Thank you. I always know when the newsletters are hitting mailboxes before I check mine because emails start flowing in and it's a variety of questions. It's not always about what's in there. And so appreciate that opportunity to get in front of residents and help encourage them to reach out for those questions services.

Thank you. Yeah, Matt and Mary, comment and a question. First, just want to give a shout out to all your team for all their hard work making all of our stuff look so good. The Boise Youth Roadmap is one of my favorite documents and it didn't look great initially because the Boise Youth Roadmap Because there was a bunch of stock images in it. We had worked with some other folks to put it together. And then by the time that your team had really taken a look at it, every single one of those images were from some neighborhood across Boise, our community, our kids. And it makes all of our documents look like they actually belong here in Boise and tells that Boise story. Your team does just such an amazing job with it. And your Energize theme as well is such a great link, I think, for both council members to their neighborhoods, their neighborhood associations. I was wondering if you could talk just a little bit about the funding through Energize that's available for our neighborhoods and for our communities and how that fits into the budget.

Sure. Thank you, Madam Mayor, Councilmember Halliburton. So there's, well, there's ongoing support, right? So we have our enterprise program manager, and then we have a community engagement coordinator that supports some of that work, but also, for example, did a lot of work on the youth roadmap going out and getting responses from young people. It takes a bit to get to those kind of folks. But we have two major grant programs, the ACT mini grants, which essentially pay for small things that neighborhood associations may need. We do one mailing a year for the neighborhood associations, typically around their annual meetings the act mini grants can be used for publicity i'm i'm going to forget the whole like list of what those can do but those are like smaller like thousand dollar kind of grants just to support running a neighborhood association having great meetings the nip program the neighborhood investment program That's larger, that is, you all fund that at about $500,000 a year. And that allows us to do much bigger projects in neighborhoods. So we recently announced and approved for FY27, the Bora Park. Abora Neighborhood Association, kind of like Pocket Park that is in the process. We're in the process of working with ITD to green up that space to bring more folks within. But we've funded things like gazebos. Open Streets is funded through that. It's a great opportunity to also work with neighborhood associations to advance some of our goals. We've been really focused in the last couple of years on projects that are related to pathways, transportation, and our climate goals. Helps narrow in on

um really helping the neighborhoods be partners in these larger strategic initiative areas so they love it the neighborhoods oh they definitely love it yeah for sure um and it seems like a lot of times when they get those grants we're able to leverage some of those grants of things that they're asking for with some other funds that we sometimes have from the city or for some other grants to get things done i guess the reason i asked that question and again maybe it's for this year or a future year is i have to imagine some of those same requests that they're asking for that amount of funding isn't going as far as they used to. If somebody is asking for sign toppers on a sign today, it's probably costing twice as much more than it cost for sign toppers five years ago. And so just kind of evaluating whether the tools that we have available to them and through Energize, if it's still funding the need at the same level, or if there's any sort of need for us to be evaluating whether those funds need to be increased in the future to kind of meet the same goals that we had set out years ago.

Great. Madam Mayor, Councilmember, we can certainly look at that as everything's getting more expensive right now. And we know that it's a balancing act for you all as you're making those decisions.

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. I think that when they make those requests, it's so nice because we're able to respond directly to those needs. And like you said, align them with our city goals as well. And so exploring whatever we can do to continue to strengthen that program, making sure that we're, you know, maximizing those dollars. And if there's additional investments, exploring how we might be able to do that too. But appreciate the work.

Thank you. All right. Thank you, Maria. Next up, Parks and Rec with Sarah Arkell. And we'll move on after Sarah to the library and likely arts and history. And we'll keep going through department reports until about 1130.

All right, good morning. Congratulations on making it this far. Leave it to your Parks and Recreation director to have an analogy here. But I think about when I was a young girl practicing a piano piece for months and months and months. and then getting to the point of having a recital and sitting in the audience and having your heart pound and it's very similar to my feeling today there is a lot of work that has gone into every single one of these presentations um and also the development of the 2027 budget proposal and i'm so excited to for my first time be here with you today to present parks and recreations plans hopes and dreams for the future We're a relatively large department. As I sit as the director for now about, oh God, seven months, I am consistently and constantly surprised and amazed with the breadth of the work that our team does, from administration to communications, marketing, foothills, open space, parks, recreation, Zuboisy. We have 189 full-time employees working every day to make sure every one of those divisions runs smoothly and provides excellent service to our community. And we just wrapped up our seasonal effort to onboard 600 temporary and seasonal workers to meet the demand of the season. And I have to say thank you to HR, to IT, to our internal service delivery departments who flex and adapt each season to accommodate that incredible effort. So here, you know, it's May and we're ready to go. In 2025, our department had the opportunity to re-envision our strategic plan, and I have distilled down our priorities based on the good work that our team did and helped with an outside consultant to access excellence and innovation. I talk a lot about the values that bring us to these priorities. care, connect, and perform. And my hope is that through the work that we're doing this year in 2026 and the work that we propose to do in 2027, you will see those values threaded through all of our efforts. As you know, a 10-minute walk to a park is a very specific, helpful, clear priority that we work to achieve every day through acquisition of new properties that hold places in trust for future parks, and also looking at those new properties and planning for future funding sources to make sure that we develop that access. Currently, 75% of our residents live within a 10-minute walk to a park that they can enjoy. and we will be increasing that over the course of the next few years. We offer 3,500 affordable recreational programming opportunities throughout the city each year. It just astounds me. Think of the impact that we have with families. And to make sure that no kiddos left behind, no family slips through the cracks, we offer an opportunity to engage in a scholarship where the city supports the engagement of a family in need. In 2025, we spent $250,000 to ensure that we are reaching everyone within our community, within our city, and we'll continue to offer that opportunity in 26 and 27. Excellence. We have to take care of the parks and the assets that we currently manage. People go to a park and they go to a program, we want them to leave feeling like they had the best experience they could have with Boise Parks and Recreation. The parks were clean, they were welcoming, they offered a variety of experiences for a variety of levels of mobility and and exploration, right? We wanna continue to provide affordable programming and think through all the free outdoor recreation opportunities we provide every day through our parks. Those affordable programs happen in our parks, they happen in our recreational facilities, but there is a spectrum of opportunity for our community to get out and enjoy at any level they are able to. And finally, bring out the best of our employees. As I mentioned earlier, 189 folks. This is a team effort. We could not deliver these services across the city without the dedicated passion of those folks. And we ask a lot of them. Bringing on board 600 seasonal and temp is a huge effort. And then managing the workforce. These are mostly young kids. who it might be their first experience working. My son actually is participating in his first job with the City of Boise. Don't worry, I worked through HR, it's all good. But this is an opportunity for us to really build the youth in our community, their confidence, their purpose. And so we're looking at how do we retain and recruit the best folks for every opportunity to be employed with the City of Boise at Parks and Rec. And finally, innovation. We have to evolve. I think Director Burgos said it perfectly. We have to evolve as we seek to manage our existing asset. How can we meet the needs of our current and future community? And how can we do it in a fiscally responsible and efficient way? So this year, 2026, we are growing our services meeting that growth maintaining the level of service through the through the change in our environment focusing again on maintaining those assets that we currently own making sure they're still available for a safe and welcome environment and then stewarding those places that those natural habitat areas that we manage across our foothills and in our river area new park sites 2026 is a fantastic year. I'm so excited to be the director this year because we've gotten to do so many wonderful things already. Whether it's bringing on new team members to help us more proactively address forest health and tree canopy health throughout our city, or bringing on new team members to adjust to 300 additional acres of downtown that we acquired through the sunset of the Urban Renewal District at the old Boise blocks. We also were very grateful for the partners that we have who donated funds to enhance the Rose Garden to the tune of $200,000. And I'm pleased to say we're awarded a Land and Water Conservation Grant for Liberty Park. We had plans to go in and repair that playground. It's one of our oldest playgrounds. And with that grant, we will also be able to add a restroom. So that's very, very exciting. Whether it's updating our pumps so that we can deliver water to our beautiful places or repairing playgrounds, our repair and maintenance workload is vast and of variety. We were just talking about making improvements to the Warthog Exhibits drainage system the other day. And I love the variety of our work. And finally, stewardship. I just want to highlight, you know, we have two staff members, a restoration ecologist and a volunteer, Native Habitat volunteer coordinator. And those two individuals work so hard throughout the course of the year to steward and rehabilitate some of those environments that we manage for natural landscapes. And because of that engagement with the community, volunteers provide so much time and effort. We're actually gaining $1.6 million worth of work in the time and effort of our community. So it's a small program, but it has a very big impact, not just in engaging our community members, but also meeting them where they care about these places. And if you want to get involved in Pollinator Posse or Weed Warriors, please don't hesitate to let me know. 2026, park enhancement. I talked about Liberty. Alta Harris Park, we are finally getting into the point of developing that park. I'm very excited about that. 2025, we focused on access off the roadway. And 2026, we'll be looking at... three million dollars of impact fees to put in a parking lot to bring utilities to the site pathways put in some landscaping some fundamental Park development needs and finally Spalding Ranch another property that's been waiting for a long time for some needed enhancements the access drive has it has been in place and the parking lot and now we are building a bathroom and wash station i'm really pleased to share and i think the mayor shared this at the state of the city that the western west bench farmers market will be at spalding ranch starting in june so i love that that we are providing as a city sort of setting the table laying the foundation for those types of engagement and activation opportunities with things as simple as parking lots and restrooms Whitney Pool under construction right now. First pool we have built as a city in over 30 years. I'm very excited to see this project move forward. And we wouldn't be here without the good partners we have at the Boise School District providing that land, hoping to have that pool open for next summer. And finally, the Greenbelt. This is a huge... priority for our team. We manage 29 miles of Greenbelt, but in total we manage 66 miles of pathway through parks. We want to be looking at ways we can enhance those connection opportunities and preserve the good connectivity we have. Specifically, enhanced pathway connectivity in 26 will be looking at East Boise. You saw last week, I believe, an IBC for helping to fund the underpass connection for the greenbelt associated with the Eckert Bridge replacement. That's very exciting that we could be flexible to accommodate that much safer connection, and I'm looking forward to see that come to fruition here in the coming fall. 2027. That was a big year, right? We're only in halfway through 26. We've got a lot to go. Looking ahead, we'll continue to run our business. We'll continue to do those major repairs and the maintenance that we need to do to ensure water is delivered to the parks, to ensure that our playgrounds, structures, shelters are all in good condition. Some of the examples for 27 would be Williams Park. In 25, we had a structural failure for the Williams Park shelter. Turns out that that playground is one of our oldest. So in 27, we'd like to go in and replace that playground and rebuild the shelter so that we can limit the impact to the community at that park. We are asking for one, as you've heard in previous slides, one new aquatic maintenance technician to accommodate the five additional students. interactive water features we've added since 2020 um whitney pool coming on board next year will be a huge impact we want to make sure we can continue to deliver the levels of service that we've been able to deliver in the past any any water facility interactive water feature that that we offer requires daily testing to make sure the water is clean requires year-long maintenance It's very difficult for us to get in and do large maintenance projects during the season, so we do that once the pools and the interactive splash pads are closed down. So while we are about to ramp up to a large, very busy season, it is a year-long effort. we've talked about the zoo maintenance needs and then of course warm springs grill and golf what a wonderful facility it's our first year open we are learning about how that how the community is using the facility and what staffing we need moving forward clearly the the grill part is um is a busy busy aspect of that business the golf part was always busy but the grill is a new um and an emerging business and we are evolving accordingly. So I'm happy to share our capital requests for 2027, majority of which are funded through impact fees. And as you know, impact fees are generated in areas of the community where we're experiencing growth. And so we are required to utilize these funds in a timely manner to accommodate that growth and increase our service level. to um to meet the need of the community molinar park amenities will be following the master plan for all of these and in molinar park looking at a shelter at the in the dog park area some additional pathways and some new sports courts At Magnolia Park, we'll be looking at a splash pad and possibly a nine-hole disc golf course. We're at the very early stages of scoping out what these dollars can accommodate. So I'm just sharing what the master plan has that's undeveloped. We'll see how far we can go with the dollars we have available. And then at Optimist Youth Sports Complex, that $750,000 will hopefully fund a new restroom on the west side of the large park. Actually, that's a picture of it right there. We have every weekend lots of sports activities at this complex, and a restroom on the west side is long overdue. We're also working with a private donor, and hopefully we'll be able to... realize some pickleball courts at Optimist Youth Sports Complex in 2027 through that donation. Finally, the water delivery engineering. This is a general fund request. We're partnering with Public Works. We appreciate their interest in using the right water for the right use. Our three park facilities on 36th Street, which is Hillside Park, Quail Hollow Golf Course, and Stewart Gulch Park are on sort of a hodgepodge of water surface excuse me water delivery mechanisms and infrastructure and what we're working one of which is geothermal groundwater wells so in working with Public Works we're trying to upgrade and update how we deliver water to all three of those sites so that we can utilize those geothermal well credits and other areas of the city for city-wide need all right i am i'm happy to answer any questions um i think you know our team's full steam ahead for this season and for next year we will continue to seek to maintain those those assets and properties that we have and look how we can sustainably grow to meet the demand of the community

Madam Mayor. Hi, Sarah. Thank you so much. I think you do have one of the best jobs in the entire world. Busy, though, too. Quick question. I know in the past we've discussed when our summer camp or school guide comes out for classes that it's usually filled up within a matter of hours. Is that the case for this year as well?

Madam Mayor, Council, Pro Tem, Corliss, absolutely. We continue to see increased demand and are trying to meet that demand with expanded services because we can generally support it through revenue. But yeah, we filled up within two hours when registration opened for the summer season. Our team, and a shout out to Roseanne Brown and her recreation team, They take very careful effort in maintaining wait lists so that when people cancel, we're always moving people up to meet the need and make sure that, you know, again, nobody slips through the cracks. But yeah, the demand on our programs is high.

I appreciate the work that your team is doing and also providing some scholarships for kids who maybe can't afford it. And I wonder, so if we look to expand those programs, what do you see as the greatest need? Is it the space to host the programs or having enough people, temporary staff to support them?

Madam Mayor, Councilmember Pro Tem Corliss, that is a great question. I think one of the beneficial outcomes of going through the effort to chart the youth roadmap was that it was clear that our facilities are a limiting factor. We simply don't have the space to offer the type of programming from adult sports to teen programming to young kid camps. We are at capacity given our facilities. When it comes to play camps and adding more park sites to our programming, a portfolio it's it's a different kind of conversation because there's more risk associated with an outdoor space we are working with our school districts to see ways we can partner but that facility limitation is is probably our biggest challenge mayor sir thank you and just one quick comment

Thank you. Thank you for the Liberty Park bathroom, permanent bathrooms at that park. I'm so excited. I know the neighborhood's been asking for that for a long time and also for the refresh. So thank you. Thank you.

Madam Mayor, since I think we have until 1130, I'll just ask a little bit more about Pickleball. Well, first, I want to thank our recreation team. This past weekend, I had multiple neighbors with kids playing baseball, softball, and then my nephew playing soccer at the Simplot Sports Complex all at the same time, all right by each other. It was so fun, and it's such a great facility. So really grateful for all the facilities we do have and the maintenance and the management of them. in the important part of the community they are. Can you, for those, for maybe our pickleball community that haven't been dialed in, didn't watch the commission meeting a couple months ago, can you kind of tell them where we're at since, you know, it doesn't say pickleball on the slides and that may be alarming to some and kind of just where we're at and And also, I will just note in that commission meeting, you did indicate that your opinion was the sport will continue to grow. So you're noting the impact there. But if you can just catch us all up, that'd be great.

oh i'd be happy to madam mayor council member morales and the rest of the community um yeah pickleball has just grown enormously in use in the last four years and it you know it's a fun sport and it has a low barrier entry right it you can play with a five-year-old and you can play with an 85 year old and i have done both When we unfortunately had to close the Willow Lane Pickleball Courts and the Manitou Courts complex, there was a clear need to communicate in a transparent way with our community what our plans were to meet the need because we had just reduced a level of service, right? And that's not what we want to be doing. So our team worked really hard. to look across our entire park inventory to identify areas where we have existing pickleball courts planned and where we could consider adding pickleball courts in the future. And that plan's on our website. We had a survey open for a month to gather feedback on that effort. It was wonderfully engaging. I think we got close to 3,000 folks taking that survey. basically it affirmed our direction we're headed in the right direction and it's gonna take some time because um we have to plan accordingly and and be transparent in our efforts to do any change um if one is proposed at a particular park we are committed to making sure that there's public uh engagement and outreach opportunities associated with that but i guess i would just plug for those anyone listening and who hasn't um hasn't caught in wind to our caught wind to our planning efforts that plan is online We look forward to hearing from anyone who has thoughts at our BPR at cityofboise.org. We respond to those emails within a couple of days. But we acknowledge that it's a growing sport, acknowledge that it is a benefit to this community. We want to be good neighbors in where we cite those courts so they don't impact neighborhoods and we can grow opportunities for play in a more informed way.

And we're Thank you director, I really do believe that I think we are taking one step at a time and it's not like it's going to take forever. But I appreciate the the the way that we're doing that, and you know with why he park being on that plan in district for you know it's like oh what can't we just paint those lines and it's I appreciate that we'll have those. Public engagement efforts to talk about those things to update the master plans those kinds of things that need to happen first and hope we can do that as possible, thank you, thank you.

Sarah, congratulations on the first meeting as well as some of the other folks doing it today. And then congrats on hitting that 75% walk to a park goal. It's going to be pretty exciting when we actually kind of get 1% even further and now we're kind of on the downhill side of closing that last gap. um couple questions so uh five fte requests um and certainly you know when we have uh ftes that are helping with maintenance that helps with some long-term costs as well so totally get that um and then some of the other ones are either going to whitney pool the golf and grill Are there any offset costs or any income that comes in through the expansion of these services? Whitney Pool, you know, certainly there's going to be some folks who qualify to get in there for free through scholarships and other programs, but we'll also be charging as well. Are any of the FTEs offset through income through the golf and grill or through Whitney Pool or anything like that?

Madam Mayor, Councilmember Halliburton, thanks for that question. So the aquatic maintenance tech is the only position that we are requesting from the general fund that will not be offset with revenue. And that is simply to make the pool run functionally. it doesn't have anything to do with programming the pool which will require the hiring of additional lifeguards and so we'll be looking at probably seasonal um seasonal work for for that programming of the pool that maintenance position really is a you know full-time all year long need um the zoo maintenance custodian or maintenance tech, I can't remember exactly, sorry. And the three folks at the golf course, all of those positions will be offset with the revenue generated from having that additional service.

do we think it's is it close to like 100 offset or it is expected to be 100 offset yeah great good to know um thank you for highlighting that yeah um and then the i guess the big and maybe a hard question um so excited about whitney pool uh we had some capital funds set aside for low pool um and had gone out to rfp but I'm not seeing low pool in the budget for this year. Can you talk a little bit about the timeline there and if we still have those capital funds set aside and how that impacts this year's budget or if that's next year's budget?

Yeah, Madam Mayor, Councilmember Halliburton, and I'm looking over. Oh, my public works friends have disappeared. So, yes, we are in the middle of a design process with a construction management general contractor firm that's been brought on board to look at this very unique historical asset. The parks team and the public works team are working in partnership to kind of work through the very early stages of that design process. I believe that contractor was just brought on board last month. So you may not see it in parks budget because it's in public works budget. But yes, we expect this year will be a thoughtful design approach and that we will be coming back for more conversations about future funding for construction.

Great. And just to be clear, we still have the long-term capital plan funds set aside for that project is it do we still have it there or is it funds that need to be found madam mayor council member halliburton it is my understanding that we still have programmed and planned funds for that capital investment Great. And construction, it actually might end up falling into the following year. Do you know when we plan on beginning any form of construction there? Is it in this budget cycle or is it in the next budget cycle for the beginning of construction repairs for the area?

Yeah, Madam Mayor, Council Member Halliburton, I do get questions about this pool on a weekly basis in any party that I go to. So it is, it's, I can't write. So I feel where these questions are coming from. And I don't believe, and I'm also hesitant to overpromise, right? Because I want to make sure that we're giving our team and our contractor the time to do the work that they need to do. I think any specific questions around timeline for design and construction would probably be better requested of Public Works since they're managing the project. And I'm happy to get that information to you.

Yep, great. We might just kind of flag that as a future discussion. I know that there's lots of people who are kind of wanting the updates of what's happening, what's going on, what the future timeline is. I think everyone is so excited about Whitney, of course, and it's going to be transformative for that neighborhood. And then still kind of seeing, you know, some summers tick by. And so I think it'd be good to have an update there, you know, where the funding is at, where the timeline's at, you know, for the project and kind of what we're looking at there.

And Councilmember Halliburton, I should mention, we do update the website for Lowell and Whitney pools frequently. And so if folks are looking for a general update on where we are in the process, our website can offer that.

Right. Thank you.

Yeah.

Thanks, Sarah. Thank you. Now we've got the library.

Madam Mayor, members of council, thank you for the opportunity to present on the current and future impact of the Boise Public Library. My name is Jessica Dorr and I am the library director. The story of the library this year and next is the story of a library focused on meeting the needs of today's users while making smart decisions and investments that will ensure we can continue to meet the growing and changing needs of our community and our growing population. We measure our success by the number of people who visit our buildings who attend our programs and who check out or bar our materials, if we are relevant to the people we serve our Community will respond and ask more of us. And to this end, we continue to see year over year growth across the system with more people visiting our locations, attending our programs and checking out our materials. In FY25, we saw an overall 5% increase in visits to our five locations compared to the previous year. And this was despite significant construction around the downtown library. And while our numbers halfway through FY26 show about an 8% decrease in visits, this decrease is entirely related to the construction that we are doing right now in the downtown library with the closure of the first floor. i really want to thank the public for their patience and their flexibility as we are making these important investments in our downtown library but also i really want to show my appreciation for their willingness to visit our new locations I know people are traveling to new locations because we are seeing an increase in visits to our branch locations anywhere from 5 to 15%. And that also is showing an increase in people attending our programs and checking out our books more at our branch locations during the downtown renovation. I've been particularly focused on program attendance for our early childhood literacy programs. So these are those zero to five that help parents and caregivers with basic literacy concepts. And I'm just thrilled to say that program attendance in these programs is up 7% at Cole and Ustick, 26% at Bound Crossing, 31% at Collister, and 268 at Hillcrest Hillcrest has an asterisk on that increase and that is because during the downtown construction our youth services team has basically moved much of their programming to Hillcrest and so we are seeing that kids are following our library staff And they're having those programs. They're having music and movements. They're having toddler story time. We are seeing people come to our locations in record numbers. The library also reached a significant milestone last year with our circulation. In 2025, library users checked out more than 1.6 million physical items. We had long exceeded the million items circulated in print, but for the first time, we circulated more than a million digital items as well. And so I think that really shows the hard work our collection development team does to make sure that the materials that they select are in a format that works for our users and of interest to them as well. Now, you know from previous presentations that I've had here with Council that the challenges associated with adding additional digital resources to our collection are not small. Digital copies remain two to three times more expensive for the library than our print copies, and we often cannot purchase titles. We could only lend them for a limited time or a limited number of circulation. And this year we are starting to see costs for individual titles range from $120 to $170 for one copy of a digital e-book or e-audiobook. so we're continuing to work with National Partners to advocate for fair and sustainable ebook lending policies and we've also adjusted our approach to acquiring digital resources we have a tiered We've had to tier how many copies of a book will need to be on hold before we purchase an additional copy. And then also for the first time, we're actually needing to implement a cap on purchasing of eBooks or eAudiobooks because with the limited resources we have, we are just not able to afford some of the titles. And we know that this is of concern to the public. We hear through our staff how much they appreciate the convenience of e-audio and digital books. And so we have done a lot of work to try to help educate the public on our website with FAQs. We've invited them to help us advocate with publishers because we see how important the convenience of digital resources are. And we continue to see increase in growth in usage. I do want to say the news is not all bad in this space. The addition of digital is really a benefit that our adult users have latched onto. I think about my own usage when I'm walking the dog and I'm reading a UBN book, or when I'm in a car and I'm doing a long distance commute. We see that usage really in our adult users. i'm thrilled that we have a different trend in our youth collection we've done a lot of work to create better spaces for browsing and we see an increase in print circulation for our board books our youth fiction our graphic novels youth are staying with print. The good news is the kids that are growing up using the Boise Public Library want books, they want access to books, and they want them in print. So I want to share how the findings from our usage data is shaping the investments that we propose for fiscal year 27. The library, as you know, continues to operate under the Strategic Framework for Impact. This was approved by the Library Board of Trustees in 2024. And as you also remember, it was created through robust community input and is used by the library to make sure we're aligning our resources to meet community needs. And specifically, I want to call out how the Boise community has asked the library to lead in elevating literacy and lifelong learning for Boise residents. So this is why we've set a goal of having every kid in Boise starting kindergarten ready to read and every third grader with their own library card. It's why we've rolled out early literacy kits at our locations and launched the 1000 Books Before Kindergarten program. And it's also the driving force behind the changes the first floor renovation is allowing us to make across the system. We're prioritizing the kids who are growing up using the Boise Public Library. When we are able to reopen the first floor library, it'll have all three floors back open for the public downtown, we're actually gonna be able to double the amount of space we have for youth services. So this means separate space for zero to five, school-aged teens this means more places to play to create to explore to learn there'll be less conflict between quiet and loud uses of the library and more flexible space that will be able to evolve and grow over time And we'll be able to grow the collection of youth materials probably about 30% from what it is today. I'm so excited to be able to welcome users to the first floor in the Reimagine Library later this year. And to build on the theme of investing to meet growing demand, in December of last year, Council approved an IBC to add two additional staff members to the library at Collister. Both positions were filled in March, and while it's really too early to capture the impact, we've been able to respond to requests from the community in that growing neighborhood for more classroom visits, more outreach events. In fact, this year for the first time, Boise Schools is having summer school in six locations across the city, and we're actually able to conduct outreach activities with them in every single location that they will be having summer school. The additional staff capacity at Collister also allowed us to successfully apply for a grant from the Urban Libraries Council. We had the ability to take advantage of the skill set of the then only solo librarian out at Collister, but with additional staff, her capacity is now leading a system-wide project that's focused on civic engagement. on the capital side when we added staff at collister we needed to configure the staff workspace and our public works team helped us add new workstations and reconfigure the back of house space to be more efficient and support collaboration this june our third auto sorter in the system will be installed at the library of bound crossing bound crossing circulates a lot a lot a lot of children's books and this will get those books in the hands of kids faster as we've seen in our other two locations with sorters downtown and colon u stick library staff can spend more time with the public when a sorter keeps materials moving behind the scenes smoothly And we're continuing the work on the first floor renovation project this work was necessary because of needing to replace outdated electrical plumbing and HVAC systems, but boy are we really proud of the work we're doing to make this a safe and welcoming space for everyone in our Community. to get ready to meet growing demand downtown and across the system this year we are requesting additional funding for materials and for a librarian senior at our library at Hillcrest on the material side as I've outlined we continue to see usage increase and we know that during challenging economic times communities turn to their library because of the value that they provide We will be able to add more copies of items which integrate print and audio, which is a great tool that we have found for helping reluctant readers or kids who struggle learning to read. We'll be able to consider adding additional databases, particularly those that provide rapidly changing technical or economic information. A lot of people that are looking for jobs or trying to improve their skills with perhaps a certification course. Print materials, the information that they need never actually becomes a printed book. Instead, it becomes a website or a database or an online tool. We'll be able to increase our access to those. The last time that the library was able to add resources for materials was in FY24, and this increase of about 15% will really make sure that we have beautiful collections that continue to serve the needs of our community, and particularly the kids that are continuing to use our locations to learn to read. We're also requesting a librarian senior for Hillcrest. With the closure of Step Ahead Idaho, which was the nonprofit that leased the space from the library, we have been able to repurpose that space for additional programming. By adding a librarian to the Hillcrest team, we'll be able to expand the work both in that location and then in outreach. I just want to call out for you this picture that you see before you. This was taken last week at Hillcrest. This is an overlap of two of the user groups that we serve out of the Hillcrest location. This is a fit and fall proof meeting. That is a program that keeps seniors strong and keeps them able to live independently, which is overlapping with Music and Movement, which is a program that is designed to help kids learn ABCs and get some wiggles out while they're hearing stories or marching around. so this group is doing this work together so when they when the fit and fall proof comes in they'll sing a song to the kids and then the kids will sing a song to fit and fall proof we're making connections across Generations um not captured in this photo she's standing to the right is Miss Michaela who is the librarian who is running this program She is one of the members of our youth services team who normally works downtown. This is where we have built demand and we are seeing a tremendous amount of interest in having more of these programs at the Hillcrest location. By adding another librarian to that staff, we will be able to keep music and movement going for our community. On the capital side, as you know, we are continuing work to finalize the library's long-term facility plan, and I'll be coming back to council probably after your summer break with some of the information we discussed and you requested in our April work session. For FY27, as announced in the Mayor's State of the City, we're requesting seed funding to expand library access in West Boise. and in fy 27 this will also see the completion of a project that has long been a priority for our public works team make no mistake the downtown library parking site repair is an engineering project that steve bergus and his team are much more excited about than i am personally this is But as they do, Public Works has gotten me excited about it because while he's focused on complying with local and federal regulations related to stormwater management and drainage, he's also sold me on the benefits to the public in having a ADA accessible parking lot, a safer pedestrian access, improved non-motorized access to the building and parking. So there really is a benefit for everyone in this. And I think this will be really, again, a place where I just want to thank the public for their continued willingness to hang in there with us as we are making improvements. around the library, in the library, and now in the parking lot probably in spring of 27, so that we really can achieve our mission of making a safe and accessible library for everyone and providing access and opportunity for everyone in Boise.

And with that, I'll stand for questions.

Madam Mayor, Jessica, I just wanted to offer my thank you to all the work that you've done over the last several years, both being your liaison for the library board and with all the facilities planning. I know we're not quite done there, but it feels like we're zeroing in on something that's going to work for both council's expectations, library needs, and public expectations. So I just want to offer my deep gratitude for your hard and dedicated work on that. Thank you.

Thank you.

Madam Mayor. Yeah, Jessica, I'll echo that. Thank you so much for all your work. I know we've had several meetings together and council's brought a lot, a lot of questions, a lot of what ifs, and you've really rose to the challenge every single time. So thank you for that. It's great to see that picture of the two different generations together at Hillcrest. I hope we can see that continue going forward. I think it's a good location. I think we'll be able to invite more of the public in. Question on, gosh, the ebooks, the digital ebooks and the audio books. And yeah, sorry to hear that we're going to have to place a cap on this from the first year. Is this a cost that is just borne by Boise Public Library or is this something as part of the consortium?

with others uh Madam Mayor Council member Corliss uh with regards to digital books uh those are not lended through the consortium so uh in the consortium will lend print materials uh but digital resources are purchased individually by each individual uh member of the consortium

Madam Mayor, Jessica, do we restrict the number of audiobooks a person can lend or have lent to them?

Madame Mayor, Council Member Corliss, yes, we do. We have a limited number of items that a user can have digital copies of at one time, limited number you can have on hold. I will say we have an unlimited number of print materials that you can check out at one time. Well, I think there's a limit, but I think it's like I think it might be like 999 in the system setting. And I realize that I have just challenged some young summer reader to test me on this. No, we do try to, you know, because the digital resources are more expensive and because we have less options on how to lend them we do need to limit how many copies you can have on hold or purchase or or have checked out at a time and so we try to incentivize the print material right Madam Mayor final question Jessica is there a way we can work with the public school district to see if we can automatically grant every third grader a library card of having without them having to come to the library Madam Mayor, Councilmember Corliss, that is a conversation that my Youth Services team is actively exploring and is so thrilled that you have asked that so we can follow up with you.

Yeah, Madam Mayor, Jessica, I just wanted to say thanks for continuing to align your budget needs, your requests with the Boise Youth Roadmap and the need to expand services to youth and specifically for teens. It'll be really exciting with this first floor remodel to see how that space becomes a little bit more accessible and inviting to our teenage community. And then similar to Public Works, I'm very excited about the parking lot upgrade as well. As someone who rides their bike to the downtown library, I'm always excited about how much bike parking there is there. and then always am thinking we could do this bike parking a little bit better so i think it'll be a really great improvement for everybody who's accessing the library and coming right off the green belt i think making it easier for those folks at the walking and biking in that area is going to be huge so appreciate all the work

All right, it looks like that's it given this 1130 we'll start with arts and history, right after our Council meeting and so just so folks are aware now we're going to take a break for lunch at noon we'll come back for our regular daytime Council meeting, which will be relatively quick. And then, as soon as we're done with that we'll move right back into budget meetings and we'll start with arts and history.

Are we losing any directors between this section and the last one or.

You mean ones that have already presented. No. okay cool all right great thanks all right we'll break for lunch um

All right. Okay.