City Council - workshop

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, you don't have to buy anything. You don't have to buy anything. You know, you don't have to buy anything. Thank you. Okay. I don't know.

I appreciate that.

But yeah, it's like two, there's a . Yeah, I have a program on that.

Oh, yeah, that's great.

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that's great. So I don't know. That's what I wanted. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, so I thought . Thank you. OK. All right. No, that's OK. Thank you. Okay. Okay.

I was just curious as well, I was there, and I was prepared to come here, and to just, like, sort of, and, yeah.

So, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. No, I agree with that, too. So, yeah. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, hello, everybody.

Welcome to our work session. Clerk, will you call the roll?

Corliss.

Here.

Halliburton.

Here.

Morales.

Here.

Nash.

Here.

Dead. Here. Willett.

Five present, one absent. Thank you. All righty. First up, we have a work session item, the emergency drought response. Steve Hubbell is joining us. While he is, I do want to point out that David Johns from Veolia is here. David, thanks for being with us and for your work on this. I just wanna tee this up in saying that I really appreciate Public Works Team and Veolia's partnership in putting this together, bringing this to council. And I wanna thank you all for it. And then be clear with the community that we are not establishing a drought emergency, but instead we are preparing as many cities have across the state and region to ensure that if there is an issue in the future, we are properly prepared for it and are able then to take the steps that we need to to protect the health and well-being of our residents. And with that, I'm going to have Steve share the information. This is an item on the agenda tonight under first, second, and third reading so that this goes into effect before the summer recess and the hot summer days.

Thank you, Mayor, Council Members. Nice to see you all. Steve Hubbell, Climate Action Senior Manager for Public Works, as the Mayor shared. I'm here to just provide a little background on the Emergency Drought Response Ordinance, which will be considered this evening. I'll run through a quick slide presentation today. Before I get started, I just wanted to acknowledge my colleague, Robin Leap Usan, and then Mary Grant, who's here from Legal, who did the heavy lifting to draft and prepare this. Just a quick overview of the agenda. We'll provide a little background in the form of current conditions with water supply, talk a little bit about the purpose of the ordinance, what it does, and how it works. And so water supply can be a pretty broad topic, obviously. So when considering the content today, we're really focused on our potable or our drinking water supply. And we'll focus the discussion and the provisions of the ordinance around that as sort of the water supply in question. And just a reminder for those listening, in Boise, our water utilities are privately operated. Customers who take utility service either take it primarily from Veolia or from Capital Water if you live in the Winstead Park bench area. And those utilities source drinking water from a variety of sources, both surface water and groundwater. The surface water supplies are primarily driven by snowmelt and then spring runoff that accumulates in the reservoir system that's upstream of Boise. Irrigation for residential and commercial properties is a significant water use in the summer. It's about three times higher than winter water use. Many property owners irrigate with drinking water, although some do irrigate from wells or from an irrigation or canal company. And then last winter, we saw a historically warm winter with historically low snowpack. And this really raised some concerns for our team as we moved through the spring and prompted the drafting of this ordinance as a proactive measure in case a drought emergency was encountered. And so state and local actions related to water conservation and drought are pretty routine across the state. Several cities have water conservation ordinances or long standing policies around water conservation, either as part of their municipal water utilities or their municipal irrigation operations. Additionally, this year, Governor Little declared a statewide drought emergency in April. The cities of Burley and Rupert have activated water conservation ordinances, and locally, the city of Caldwell has called for voluntary reduction in irrigation. And the ordinance that'll be considered tonight is intended to be proactive and very similar to those actions that I just mentioned. Boise water utilities are private, as I mentioned earlier, and so they would be challenged to enact any mandatory water conservation measures on their own without support from the city. So in addition to the ordinance's benefit for drought response, it also provides a bridge for collaboration between the city and those utilities. And as the mayor mentioned, Veolia is here today. We were able to share the draft of the ordinance for their review. They provided beneficial feedback and some changes that we were able to incorporate in based on their comments. So if the ordinance were to be approved this evening, it's important to point out that it does not activate a drought emergency or water conservation order today. A good way to think of it is setting up a plan or a tool in the toolbox for response if a future drought emergency arises. And it would provide the ability for the city to make a subsequent declaration to address that challenge. Any future declaration would be managed in a phased approach, which I'll walk through in just a second, and would likely focus on water conservation related to irrigation based on that expanded usage in the summer. One important thing to point out concerning applicability is this would only be applicable to users of a public drinking water system. It would not be applicable to well users or irrigation users as wells and irrigation are regulated by the Department of Water Resources at the state level. The ordinance identifies a multifaceted approach to determine when a drought emergency would be declared. First, it would consider climatic conditions like temperature and precipitation. Next, it would consider water supply conditions for things like river flows, reservoir levels, or operational impacts to the water utilities. And then finally, it would rely on federal data from the U.S. Drought Monitor Index for Ada County, and you can see an example of that here on the screen. This data was pulled from June 16th, and you can see that Ada County at that time was a mix of abnormally dry and moderate drought. And then in the ordinance details, the list of potential actions have a linkage back to the drought condition in the drought monitor. Having said all that, I do want to share a little bit of good news. The challenging weather over the winter has been balanced a bit by some late spring rains and then certainly with what we've seen the last two weekends. Additionally, the reservoir system carried over some storage water from last year. So I want to emphasize to council and the public, there's no drought emergency today that would necessitate an order or a proclamation. Having said that, conditions can change rapidly, and the ordinance provides the city with a proactive tool to respond quickly if needed. And this slide just demonstrates visually the phased approach that's identified in the ordinance. So typically the first step would be an advisory order, and that would essentially alert the community to changing conditions around drought and would really be focused around education and outreach. The second step would be a voluntary conservation order. And that would include recommended actions that reduce water usage. For example, changing an irrigation schedule or recommending certain times of the day for irrigation. And then if conditions were to worsen or voluntary conservation is not effective, there could be a move to a mandatory conservation order. And this would transition the irrigation recommendations that were mentioned to requirements. Finally, in the most extreme conditions, a declaration could require that certain water uses would cease. And with the last slide, just closing out with some beneficial recommendations on water conservation, what can be done currently. Certainly outside of a drought, there are a lot of opportunities for water conservation. So a couple of tips that are helpful is to water your lawn early in the morning, late at night or overnight. Less water evaporates when the sun's not out, so you get more benefit from the water that you're using. Another one is to water every other day or every third day for a longer period of time. This helps improve the root system of your grasses or your plants usually, are usually making them more sturdy and more able to withstand our summer conditions. Another one is to adjust your sprinkler system so that it's not spraying on the sidewalk or on the pavement. This is a frequent maintenance issue at my home. The next one would be to choose native plants that are drought tolerant. Or if you're considering larger landscaping changes, you could look at xeriscaping. And then finally to check for leaks in your irrigation system. And that's all the content that I prepared today, but I'm glad to answer any questions about the slides or the ordinance.

Go ahead, Council President Pro Tem.

Yeah, Steve, thank you very much for this presentation and walking us through this. I have a quick question to make sure I heard something correctly. For our water use in the summer, did you say we are using three times as much?

Madam Mayor, Council Member Corliss, yes, based on information we have from the Veolia Utility, their water usage peaks out at about three times what the winter average is in the summer months.

Wow, that's incredible. Okay, thank you. Sounds like residents, I really appreciate the recommendations on the last slide. It does sound like residents can't wait to do something to start conserving that water today on their own. I appreciate that.

Go for it.

I'll go. Jimmy, you go first, and then we'll go down.

First, thanks for the presentation, and thank you for being here from Veolia as well. I appreciate the work together on this. Question about some of our other types of water users. You said we've got our well water users, and we've got folks who are irrigating out of the canal. Certainly, those aren't our jurisdictions. Like you said, this doesn't necessarily apply to them. I guess my question is, do we still offer some education and encouragement for those folks as well? Because even though they're pulling out of a well, there's potentially some issues there if they're doing too much. So any sort of education or effort that we're encouraging those other types of users, even though they're not our own user?

Madam Mayor, Councilmember, thanks for that question and pointing that out. I think, you know, the drought conditions that we've experienced or the winter conditions that we experienced have presented some additional opportunity to communicate from the city on water conservation. And the approach in our discussions with community engagement is to try to provide baseline information that's beneficial and applicable regardless of the water source that someone's using. You know, certainly like the examples that I just walked through at the end. So we're going to try to design communications that are beneficial to all audiences, whether drinking water users, well, irrigation.

And I imagine that irrigation districts who are you know, really great at managing their own water systems, probably have their own measures that go into effect as far as the amount of flow, how much people can use times, those types of things. Do you know if they issue their own, you know, drought emergency ordinances or how they would issue something or is it not something that we've looked into yet?

mayor council member just as an fyi i didn't mention it in my comments but we did share the draft ordinance with irrigation representatives at the idaho water users and the treasure valley water users the local irrigators i would say each district or each canal company probably takes a slightly different approach to that maybe some with more active some with less active communications depending on the nature of their customers and where they provide service into the city. But yes, typically there are approaches of the amount of water that's available to a person. In some areas, you have watering schedules based on the flow that's available already built in. So in some ways, some of those districts are better prepared for these type of circumstances than the user who just irrigates with potable water.

Awesome. Yeah, I'm sure they're part of our contact tree, but it seems like especially if you ever got into those later stages when you're looking at voluntary and mandatory action, you know, making sure that irrigation districts were, you know, well aware of what we were doing and kind of hopefully in partnership, you know, because things could get a little bit wonky if all of a sudden you've got mandatory actions. uses in somebody's flood irrigation, irrigating their lawn, you know, next door on a regular basis. Um, just one other question. So you had mentioned some of the things that folks can do right now, which I think are great and super helpful. Do we have any incentives in place as far as encouraging those behaviors, drought tolerant plants, anything like that, that kind of help people move proactively towards, you know, working towards drought?

Madam mayor council member. Let me get back to you on that. We did a small pilot incentive through Keep Boise Cool, but I want to make sure that I get the right details for you so we can share that as a follow-up.

Perfect.

Thank you.

I was next.

Steve, thanks for your presentation. I wondered if you had any idea of how much, uh, residential water consumption in the Treasure Valley compares to, say, industrial. I think I was surprised by how much of our residential consumption is just lawn watering. But I'd really like to understand, like, can we make a difference in our consumption and overall consumption in the Treasure Valley? Or is this residential use a small fraction of our water consumption generally?

Madam Mayor, Council Member Nash, let me share at least an initial thought. If you look at water usage in the Treasure Valley or the Boise River watershed broadly, the most significant user by far is agriculture. So there is something to consider there. In terms of specific usage in Boise, I think probably best for today to follow up and get you an answer with the detailed percentages and breakdowns, if that's acceptable.

That'd be great. Thank you.

I really appreciate you and the mayor bringing this forward. I obviously understand its preparedness and hopefully it's not something that ever needs to be enacted, but I think it's a great opportunity to remind residents to be mindful of the use of this limited resource that we have. And I'm grateful. I grew up in a, drought environment in my early elementary school years. And we used to have a bucket in the shower to catch extra water to then water the plants. And I think that there's a lot of little things that a lot of us can be doing to be more mindful. So I appreciate the opportunity to have a community conversation around it. And hopefully it's not something that we need to enact, but glad it's in place in case we do.

Madam Mayor. Steve, thank you for the presentation. Ditto what's been set up here. Just a couple questions. Have you had any conversations with neighboring municipalities that might want to come alongside and do something similar? And then number two, is there a need to work with the state to ensure that, for example, an HOA could not find someone for grass dying because of a restriction, something like that? Have those conversations been had?

Madam Mayor, Councilmember, The adjacent localities with the unique nature of drinking water utility operation in Boise as compared to most of the other localities, a lot of the cities already have these or similar measures in place, so not a lot of direct conversation on this. However, we have been participating in some working groups on water conservation and water education collaboration from our technical team and CE team. So I think that beginning to roll and likely to pick up more steam as this work continues. For the second question in terms of the HOAs, I'd like to take that one as a follow-up and get back to you on that.

Thanks. I think on that one, if there's a way to kind of, if a drought emergency is declared to not have those kinds of issues, I could see that in our newer neighborhoods where they have HOAs being a concern. And so I think that would be good to look into. Thanks. Thank you.

All right, Steve, it looks like that is it really appreciate your work on this and David thanks for being here from viola and to the rest of the public works team as well, and, as I mentioned, we will bring this up tonight it's on for a second and third reading. And next up let's see who's presenting free. the mayor's office from my office and Emily Allen from the council office. They're joining us to discuss the Emoto ordinance that is also on for second and third reading tonight. I want to thank council member Hallie Burton for your leadership in this space. And as they get prepared to talk about this, I do want to address the fact that we are getting so many calls, concerned residents, concerned parents, others about emotos and e-bikes and e-mobility in general. And so tonight's action is about emotos specifically because of the very real health concerns that we're seeing. And we wanted to do this quickly as we're at that kind of heightened time of usage right now. And we are seeing more and more reports of medical issues and people getting really hurt. And so we'll pick this up separately, but then also I want the public to know that we will continue to talk about the other issues as well. We're establishing a task force similar. In the past, we established a traffic fatality task force to look at what has happened with crashes and what could have prevented those crashes so that we can create improvements in our community. This task force will look at e-mobility with a goal of getting ahead of crashes and provide to us recommendations on ways that we can advance e-mobility because we want people moving in ways other than cars throughout the city in safe ways for both the users and others. And we'll be working on that. And then we'll also have a discussion in July about just slowing down in public education efforts around these issues as well. And so I'm going to pass this over, it looks like, to Brie first. I really appreciate all the work that Emily Allen, Brie Brush, and others have done to get us to this point tonight and look forward to the discussion.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, council members. As the mayor said, we're here before you this afternoon to share what you'll see on your evening agenda tonight, an emergency e-modo ordinance. And I'm going to start us off with an overview of the landscape of the situation, what it is specifically we're talking about, and then hand it over to Emily to get into the specific mechanics of the ordinance before you tonight. Talking about the role of e-mobility in our community, as the mayor mentioned, e-mobility, e-bikes, e-scooters can really play play a vital role in allowing our residents to travel further distances than they would normally on a regular bike and without having to rely on their vehicle. And we wanna make sure we preserve this as a safe mode of transportation and not compromise folks' ability to enjoy our shared spaces for active transportation. But we also wanna make sure people are doing it safely and we're promoting an orderly and safe shared space for everyone to enjoy. We also want to recognize that younger residents can use biking as a way to get around our city independently, and we know how important that is for them. So what is an e-moto? What is it that we're talking about specifically tonight? There's an image right here, but I think everyone can conjure up an image that they've seen in the last few months of individuals who drive, ride these around neighborhoods and maybe they're in traffic, maybe they're not, maybe they're on the sidewalk, but I think you can have a picture of that in your mind. It's a two-wheeled vehicle that uses a battery and a motor to travel at a higher rate of speed than a standard e-bike. Some of these devices can exceed 45, 50 miles per hour. Overview of the issue. These have been growing in their accessibility. The market is moving really quickly to make these widely available for folks to buy. And we've definitely seen that on the streets, on the green belt, throughout our neighborhoods across Boise over the last few months. And so have our neighboring cities, which I'll talk about in just a moment. And in the last two months in particular, this has been our number one resident call, email, people calling to let us know that they're seeing folks who pose a danger to themselves and others. They're weaving in and out of traffic in an unsafe manner. They're jumping on and off sidewalks, popping wheelies, and really compromising the safety of our roadways. And in general, we're seeing that there's a lack of community education on the need to license these, how people can come into compliance with those. So that's what we hope that this ordinance will provide as a tool to do that. Across the region, we are not alone. We might actually be one of the last ones to make a big push on this effort, falling into really two categories. One, we have our neighbors in the Treasure Valley and beyond. making a concerted effort to provide educational messaging, either through their police department social media page, their city websites. So we have Meridian, Nampa, Eagle, and McCall all expressing what people need to do if they're riding these devices, where they can and can't ride them. And then in this other category, we have those who have either already enacted an ordinance or are pending ordinances right now. They have ordinances before their city councils in the coming weeks. Garden City passed theirs last week, and it's very similar to what's going to be before you tonight. Rexburg is contemplating one at the moment in the Wood River Valley. It's just we're a few months behind them, but they're varying degrees of what folks are doing here, but we think we're all working in the same direction and have a consistent message that we're sending to folks using these vehicles. Our proposed next steps, first, before you tonight, you see the emergency e-moto ordinance that really seeks to clarify what these devices are and where they can and can't be used, how people can use them. And then number two, establish an e-mobility task force because we know this is not the only mode of e-mobility that needs some strategy behind it. So we really hope to be able to work on that as well over the next few months. And I'm going to have Emily go into the mechanics of that ordinance and that task force a little bit more for you.

Thanks, Bree. Hi, Council. Hi, Mayor and Council. So what you're going to have before you tonight at the 6 o'clock meeting is reflective of work across departments throughout the city and is what we believe is the best path forward with a lack of clarity that the state law currently does not provide. So based on a high volume of public feedback, addressing these types of vehicles, in particular Emotos, is what's most important and we believe provides clarity that is going to ensure greater safety and allow us to prevent accidents from happening, as the mayor already stated so well. So two core elements are in the ordinance before you at six, which is that an e-moto should be defined as an electric two- or three-wheeled vehicle that has a motor over 750 watts or can exceed 28 miles per hour in speed, and they may or may not have pedals. Importantly, what this ordinance is going to say and requires that if you have any moto based on this definition, it's going to require users to comply with already established Idaho Department of Transportation requirements that's not limited to but includes licensing, registration, and insurance. And it's important to note as well that if ITD, through a DMV office, if you were to go show up and try to license something, says that they could not title this, then based on this ordinance, that vehicle would be prohibited from use on Boise streets. So the key component is this definition, watts over 750 or speed, and that you must comply with already established Idaho Department of Transportation requirements. In addition, the task force that we are launching today is the formation of a group of members with representatives from the Boise Independent School District, bike businesses, Boise Police Department, the Boise Bicycle Project, Boise's disability community, as well as youth and parent representatives, because we recognize that this particular population is going to be affected by the ordinance tonight and uses the mobility devices. often. The purpose of this task force is to inform any additional policy that may be needed given the complexity and breadth of e-mobility devices that are available today, as well as inform what public education and safety needs are required to clarify this further. These meetings will be monthly beginning in early August and go through December. In addition to that, we recognize that there is a need for broader engagement with the public and so. In conjunction with the task force next steps will include creating a plan for Community engagement. In order to ensure that we're hearing from all of you, because we recognize that there's been a lot of feedback already, and this is what. These are the steps that we're taking to immediately respond to the public feedback, recognizing that there will be more. and ensuring that we give opportunity to the public to talk about that. As the mayor said as well, on July 14th, we will hear more in a work session about additional public education efforts that are going to be launched. So stay tuned. We will keep the public informed through press releases, our socials, and our website. Bree and I are happy to stand for any questions, and we also have the chief of police here to answer any law enforcement-related questions.

Madam Mayor, if I could speak to the chief, I'd appreciate it. Emily and Bree, thank you for your presentation and thank you for your quick action on this. Chief, what I'm most interested in is there's been times, I can think of one experience a couple of years ago where we hear community response, we take quick action, we all clap and pat ourselves on the back. And then I can remember one time when I was on a ride along, I remember a sergeant telling me, yeah, I don't know how the hell we're ever going to enforce that one. What can you tell me on this particular ordinance about like the awareness among your officers and the likelihood that we can enforce this or that will be effective? And maybe what role that enforcement might play in bringing more awareness about some of the risks associated with emotives?

Yeah, Madam Mayor, Council Member Nash, I can tell you right now my officers are looking for additional tools to enforce this. We recognize the problem. We see it daily. So, If you're asking about the feasibility of enforcement, we absolutely can. This just gives us another tool within that. There are behavior issues we're going to be looking at that reason sufficient for the stops. So I think this, again, is just an additional tool and hopefully bring that awareness to parents when they're going out and they're purchasing these items for their kids, understanding the applicable laws that need to be followed. So I think it'll be both on an enforcement side and an education side as parents are purchasing these items for their kids to go out on, which is one of our biggest concerns when we see young children on these Emotos driving down the streets and just looking for those additional tools. So I think we're going to be in really good shape to enforce it.

Awesome. Thank you.

Madam Mayor, if I can have a follow-up question there and then just, you know, probably actually starting out with a comment. I think One of the really important things here is to define what e-motos are and what e-motos aren't. So I think that there's a lot of confusion from community members, sometimes difficulty from law enforcement telling what's the difference between an e-bike, a class one, a class two, or a class three. And really what we have defined here at the city right now are e-bikes. All of them, none of them with the ability to go over 28 miles per hour, none of them with motor sizes that are over 750. And really, I think what our ordinance here intends to do is to make sure that when people talk about e-motos, they're not thinking of them as e-bikes, that they're thinking and treating them as motorcycles and the same rules and laws that apply. And so can you talk maybe just a little bit about what those rules and laws would be as we treat these as motorcycles?

Uh, uh, madam mayor, uh, council member Halliburton. Yeah. So, uh, you're correct. When looking at the class one, two or three e-bikes, it is difficult to discern just looking at those, what classification it is. Uh, so that'd be difficult to generate any kind of a stop or anything off of that. Just by looking at the e-motos tend to be a, they're a little easier to identify. I mean, I was behind two of them just yesterday. Typically, they don't have pegs that look much more like dirt bikes or motorcycles, or they use pegs. I'm sorry, they don't use pedals. So they are easily discernible. One of the other things we're looking at from this is the operation of these vehicles on the roadways and the behavior associated to it. So I think that'll be helpful as well. So it won't be just on We're not going to be trying to decide what classification of e-bike this is. Is this an e-moto? We have a legitimate reason for the stop. We conduct the stop. We're able to verify the capacity that it's over 750 watts. We know it's going to be capable of greater speed. So once it's over that, we're going to be in really good shape to move forward in enforcing that, enforcing the ordinance.

And then as far as those enforcement mechanisms go, if we're treating them the same as motorcycles, I think we're really looking at a registered vehicle, licensing insurance, driver's license. If you're riding a motorcycle, you have to have an endorsement, a motorcycle endorsement. Are those sort of the things that we'll be looking at or are there additional things beyond that?

Madam Mayor, Council Member Halliburton, no, those will be the things that be a component of it. So when we make that stop for a motorcycle, since that's how we're going to look at classifying it, we would look for the license, the registration, the proof of insurance, the driver's license with a valid motorcycle endorsement to be operating as a roadway.

Awesome. Thank you. I think that that's really... important to understand is that there's no new category here that's being created. It's simply moving e-motos into an already existing category where we have clearly defined rules on how they're allowed to use the road and actually even the foothills as well. We have some specific spots where we do allow motorcycles. And so for treating them the same, it's not treating anything new. It's just simply placing them into the right category. So thank you for your work on that.

Thanks, Chief. I have a question. And maybe this is for staff, but first, I really appreciate this coming forward and all the work that's been done on it. I think this has been a rising issue in the community for the last year or two. We've heard a lot about it. So I'm glad for this step and for the additional steps that we're looking at taking over the next coming months to continue to carve out the appropriate spaces for these uses. If a parent has... purchased something for their children, how do they know what I mean, is it best to just check the manufacturing instruction? You know, like, how do they know what size it is? Is there a place that can go and get it checked by somebody? Like, how does a parent know what's appropriate and what their kid is riding?

Yeah, Madam Mayor, Council President, most of these bikes are going to have a sticker somewhere on them that says that, or it'll be printed directly onto the frame, or you can look at the manufacturer that you bought it from. I did some research to prepare for this, and most every ad says it's wattage capability and the speed that it can go. So you can quickly identify that. Thank you.

Madam Mayor?

Yeah, and just to be clear, Bree... In that the stickers don't say Emoto, but they say the wattage, which is above 750, correct?

Yeah.

So anything higher than 750. And then the speed limit higher than? 28.

28.

So that's what's on the sticker.

That's what will be on the sticker or printed on the frame. And a lot of these are 3,000 watts. They're not even close to 750.

And then, Madam Mary, so last question to follow up on that. So if it is over 750 or over 28 miles per hour, it should be licensed like a regular vehicle?

Yeah, you need to be going to the DMV because it could even be more like a dirt bike than a motorcycle and not even street legal. So that's something that they can ascertain. Thank you.

Madam Mayor Brie, I'd be interested to know if we've considered any type of like a website that would be like a buying guide for parents. I would love to have something like that up before the Christmas season in the same way that we, you know, provide information to discuss the risk of floating the river and I think it would go a long way even like today I feel like I'm pretty familiar with e-bikes and dirt bikes and I'm having to like okay follow along and I think a parent that may not be as aware of that that may not be aware that the scooter they just bought is can go 50 miles an hour and why a 12 year old without a helmet probably shouldn't be going 50 miles an hour on the street. Things like that might be helpful. So I hope you would consider working on something like that. I think it would be of great use to the city.

Yes, Madam Mayor, Council Member Nash, we do have a new website section we're launching with all of this information on it tomorrow. Tomorrow it'll be live so folks can see that and we can start to push that out. And we'll work with our partners at the hospitals and other local agencies to amplify that message.

Yeah, and that's what I want to point out too with the task force, having medical professionals, the school district, bike shops, all of that, their information and expertise will be helpful, but I also see them as great partners in sharing out the information in the long run.

Madam Mayor, Kathy's got her hand up.

Oh, go ahead, Council President Pro Tem, and then I'll head on down to Morales.

Okay, Madam Mayor, thank you. Brie, Emily, Chief, I really appreciate this information and so happy to see us putting this ordinance together before the summer. As everyone had mentioned before, this is the number one issue I hear about. And I think this is great to have this in place and glad we're going to continue on with the task force and education. A couple of quick questions. How did we land on the 28 miles per hour?

Madam Mayor, Council Pro Tem Corliss, the 28 miles per hour is a standard bright line for these devices. They're kind of in buckets, can go under 20, but up to, or from zero to 20, 20 to 28, and then over 20 is this whole different category. So we're following what the national practice and how these are classified.

So this is kind of a national standard. We're not creating anything new that's not already existing today.

Correct. It's manufacturing standard, really. That's how they're made.

Right. I understand that there may be adults out there who purchased these today and don't have an understanding, maybe that now they need to be licensed and registered. So I guess my question, two questions is when we are doing. If they are pulled over and we're ticketing, what does that ticketing look like?

Madam Mayor, Council Member Corliss, I'll mostly defer to the Chief, but I want to highlight that folks aren't just getting randomly pulled over. They're usually being pulled over for some type of behavior that's prompting it. It's not going to be just purely because they're on a device like this. Okay.

I met a mayor, uh, council pro tem. So yes, uh, we obviously have to have reasonable suspicion to conduct the traffic stop and the direction I give my officers be the same that I give them for any normal traffic enforcement. Um, they have the discretion whether or not to use as an education, uh, give them a warning, talk to him about the violation or issue citation. What are the officers feel is going to be the, the correct, uh, the correct option in that specific situation. So we do something similar here. And back to Brie's point, a lot of it's going to be behavior driven. So if we have somebody who's operating one of these, whether it's an adult or not, in such a poor fashion that we're engaging in that traffic stop and they have the violation, the officer feels that they need to cite for the poor behavior, they may well go ahead and cite for the no insurance and the registration and stuff like that under this ordinance.

Madam Mayor, Chief, Will a resident be pulled over if they're riding one of these on a residential sidewalk?

Madam Mayor, Council Pro Temp, that is currently a violation of city ordinance. That doesn't have to be changed. So yes, they can be stopped for operating these on the sidewalk. They can be stopped operating these on the green belt. That already exists outside of this ordinance.

Great. Madam Mayor, one final question for the Chief. If a resident sees... people on their emotos that are writing them reckless or on sidewalks, what do you recommend that they do?

Madam Mayor, like anything, if they're seeing violations of law, they can call 911 to report it. giving the best description, location, and if we have officers in the area, we can dispatch to try to locate them. These will be pretty difficult to locate in those moments, but gathering that information is helpful because if we have constant complaints in a certain area, we can direct patrols in there for increasing proactive enforcement, whether it's for traffic stops, moving the motor team over, patrol teams as needed. Right.

Thank you.

Madam Mayor, that was my question for the Chief. I wasn't sure. 911 is the right number to call, so perfect. But also curious about pathways. You said it's already, you know, practice. We're already probably signing people with emotes on pathways. How are those traffic stops happening? You know, I mean, I'm just not visualizing a high-speed chase on a pathway, right? And there's not a squad car there with lights on. For the pathway piece for that, how is that going and will this help kind of on that side of things?

Madam Mayor, Council Member Morales, yes, I think this will certainly help. And again, I think it's to get that education component out about what is allowed, what isn't. It gives that more clear, bright line rule because there's a lot of questions, I think, in the community about this. Yes, we do conduct stops with our bike team, say the Greenbelt, for example. They're out there. The Emoto component is easily identifiable as being in violation of Our currency orange, we know it's well above a class two just based on the way it's looked with the pegs, no pedals. That doesn't mean they stop for us. So, and our officers on bicycles, it's a little harder to catch up with some of these. Our pursuit policy will not change with this since we're considering this a motor vehicle. So if somebody actively flees and it's not a violent felony against a person, we're not going to actively pursue, but we will attempt to catch up and stop them. So we are exploring options, whether we're utilizing the traffic, the motor's team, um, to do some level enforcement, um, or actually looking at e-bikes specifically for our officers on the green belt to help them move through and actually catch up to people that are doing this or other types of traffic. We've, we've kicked around a bunch of ideas on how we're going to help, uh, greater enforce this as we move forward. So.

Yeah. Madam mayor, just, you know, comment there, get our bike guys, some drones maybe, but, um, thank you. Appreciate that.

And Madam Mayor, just I guess one kind of final question here to kind of tee this up for you. It's going in front of us in an ordinance tonight. When does it go into effect? What other sort of next steps as far as a city are we planning on doing for any sort of outreach or education going forward?

Madam Mayor, Councilmember, this ordinance will go into effect tomorrow. And we plan to, over the next two weeks, put together a really solid plan for an education campaign around encouraging people to slow down and really trying to get this message out there. So we plan to bring that back to you on the 14th.

Great. Thank you. And we'll hear probably these comments tonight as we get to the voting part, but just want to thank you two and chief in the police department, legal team, all the folks who've been trying to navigate what I think is a pretty gray area when technology moves faster than regulation and people don't really know what an e-bike is, what an e-moto is, where things belong. I think that that's sometimes the tactic of the folks that are selling them is to try to figure out how they can operate in these gray areas. And I appreciate all the work that's done to make sure that they're clearly defined as a motorcycle and therefore treated by the same laws and that we've found, you know, a very clear way to do that and to continue to work with partners and making sure that we're working together across jurisdictions. So thank you.

All right, I appreciate it.

Yeah, I'll take a motion for executive session. Madam Mayor, pursuant to Idaho Code sections 74-2061C, I move to enter executive session to communicate with legal counsel to discuss acquiring an interest in real property.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Clerk? Nash?

Yes.

Dead? Yes.

Willett? Yes. Corliss? Yes. Alleyburton? Yes. Morales? Yes. All in favor, motion carries.

Thanks all. We will be back in here at six.