City Council - Regular Meeting

all right good evening welcome to tonight's Colville City Council workshop today is July 6 2026 it is 5 35 p.m we're going to start out tonight with a presentation from call the night rodeo so thank you Nicole go ahead and get started

Hello, Mayor, Madam President, and Council. Correction. Sorry, Angelique. That's okay. I was going to introduce myself.

I was looking at the script. Sorry.

That's okay. That's okay. First of all, thank you all for being here on a technical day off. We appreciate that. Angelique Rude, I have the pleasure and responsibility of serving as the 2026 Caldwell Night Rodeo President. About eight months ago, we met with City Council to talk about all things rodeo, and one of the things you asked of us was to come at least once a year. to give you a state of the state on your hometown rodeo. So we're excited to do that today. I do believe I have a presentation if you wouldn't mind pulling that up. And I should say community members, thank you for being here as well. You're the most important part of Caldwell night rodeo. So we very much appreciate your time. Okay. Um, I get the opportunity to talk a little bit about the rodeo today. We're going to cover three things. We're going to talk about the rodeo's history, what we're doing today, the economic impact we have. We're going to move to our future plans and then talk a little bit about what we need from the city council to ensure we can stay another 100 years in the city of Caldwell. I thought it would be fun to talk a little bit about the rodeo's history. Will you guys progress that for me? Do I need to tell you? You can go ahead and hit the next one if you like.

Or does that work here? Okay, great.

Okay, I know all of you are very familiar with your hometown rodeo, but I always think it's fun to include a couple historical facts about where this rodeo started. So I'm gonna begin there. This clicker does not love me. Should I be pointing at a certain place? Perhaps. Okay, talking just a little bit about Caldwell Night Rodeo history. So not everyone knows where Caldwell Night Rodeo originated, and I want to make sure everyone in this room leaves with that. So in 1922, the US government was getting ready to disband the Caldwell National Guard horse cavalry. And with that, there was some fundraising that had to happen. And so in 1923, the first fundraising event was held, and then in 1924, the very first rodeo. So this rodeo came along to save something in the city of Caldwell, and we think that heritage really matters. Throughout the years, we became the Caldwell Homesteaders Jubilee Rodeo, and then eventually moved on to become Caldwell Night Rodeo. Some of you may know that we bankrupted the rodeo at one point. Right after moving to Painter Avenue off South Kimball, we had to file for bankruptcy. Does anybody know why we did that? It's because we held a big concert, paid a lot of acts to come in, and then it rained, rained, rained, and we had to file bankruptcy to cover those expenses. And that's where your rodeo earned the tagline of where the cowboys are the stars, because that rodeo board and city at the time decided that this would be about a rodeo and wouldn't bankrupt the rodeo again to put on a show, which I think is really important. A few other things. In 1966, we wanted to save the rodeo in the city of Caldwell. We put on a dinner, $100 a plate, which would be about $1,000 a dinner today, just to save Caldwell Night Rodeo, and it worked. We moved on to get the rodeo back on its feet. And in 1993, we even started getting rid of the wood bleachers and moving to what you see there today. In 2004, we did something very important, which was create our charitable nonprofit end, which is a 501c3. Cobble Night Rodeo itself is a 501c4, so we're also a not-for-profit organization. But creating a 501c3 arm allowed us to take the alcohol sales that we earn as a rodeo and also allowed us to receive funds that might not have been available to a 501c4. And much of the funding that we've received to date for this capital campaign has been made possible by having a 501 arms. So quite important. A few other things in 2024, along with some of you, we celebrated our 100 year anniversary as a rodeo, which is a pretty big deal. I've had the tendency to forget how important Caldwell Night Rodeo is to the community because I grew up in the Valley. I've been coming to the rodeo for 40 or more years. You guys live in a community and serve as leaders in a community with one of the top 10 rodeos in the entire country. I want to put that into perspective just for a second. There are 700 professional rodeo cowboy association sanctioned rodeos in the United States. We're one of the top 10 sitting right here in your community. That shouldn't be lost on anybody. Community support is the other important aspect of the rodeo. I had a conversation with the mayor a couple of years ago talking about where all of our money goes. And one thing people are always surprised to hear is that all of our money goes back into the rodeo or community. We are a not for profit organization. Two years ago when I met with your mayor, our balance sheet showed $18,000 after we gave every single penny we made through community organizations, and we should all be very proud of that. I want to talk about that a little bit more. As a rodeo, you have a few different ways to raise funds. One of those is through concessions. People buy a lot of hamburgers and French fries and nachos at the rodeo. All of those funds go directly back to these very important service clubs. For many of these service clubs, Caldwell Night Rodeo keeps them alive throughout the year. This is their major fundraiser. We don't keep a dollar from any of the concessions raised. We give that all back to the rodeo club, exchange, Lions Club, Job's Daughters. Optimist International. That's all money going right back to the community. Additionally, we have year-round giving. We provide a tremendous amount of funding to the ICA, Salvation Army, Boys and Girls Club, the YMCA, College of Idaho, and many others. In fact, this year we've given up more than $300,000 to local community charities. Our 501c3 arm, the Caldwell Knight Rodeo Foundation, also does some amazing work. You guys would be really proud to see what we've built. We have a Rodeo 101 trailer that literally travels across the Northwest with a big logo on it that says Caldwell Night Rodeo. That Rodeo 101 vehicle will see over 1,000 kids this year. We've taken that Rodeo van over to Eagle Rodeo, to Snake River Stampede. We even were asked by Reno Rodeo to come And next week we'll be in Ogden. So Caldwell Night Rodeo is all across the Northwest, which not only benefits the rodeo, but benefits the city and tourism dollars as well. Obviously, as you know, we give a tremendous amount of money to our Power of Pink, our Man Up Crusade, and each night we're giving money away to various charities that mean something to this community. But aside from that, the economic impact of Caldwell Night Rodeo is tremendous. In fact, according to the work Roger Brooks did on behalf of the city chamber, Caldwell Night Rodeo makes up more than 10% of all travel dollars that come into Canyon County. That's a big deal. Numbers and sense wise, we commissioned a rodeo impact analysis, an economic impact analysis through the University of Idaho three years ago. We thought that was important before we started asking people for money that we could show what we're doing in our communities. These are not small numbers. Annual impact in 2021 of the Caldwell Night Rodeo was almost $7 million in sales, which equates to $2 million in payroll and benefits, more than 70 jobs, property taxes exceeding 130,000, and state taxes exceeding 260,000. These are incredibly conservative numbers. These are only new dollars to Canyon County. If you live or work in Canyon County, your dollar did not count to these numbers. All we're looking for is new dollars coming into the county. Why does that matter? Because if we're considering dollars that already exist here, they could be spending those at Indian Creek or destination Caldwell. We wanted to demonstrate to you what the loss would be to the city if Caldwell Night Rodeo didn't exist in Caldwell any longer. And this is what we're talking about with 2021 numbers. As you look at our 2025 statistics, that's grown impressively. Our annual sales output for the rodeo was almost $9 million in 2025, which included an additional $6 million in capital investments, putting our total impact at over $14 million. Additionally, we gave back $360,000 to local charities and another $100,000 plus to local service clubs. I hope you can see the impact of your hometown rodeo is much bigger than a rodeo once a week. We are making real economic impact to your city. A few new things going on here. So as you all know, we're working on an impressive capital campaign that was all kicked off by the previous council. The previous council and mayor saw some importance in investing and our community and provided the initial gift, which then we've done everything we can to grow. And so we established a $7.6 million fundraising goal kicked off with a million point six from the city, which we very much appreciated and are putting to work for you all. So what does that look like? Our vision for this next section, obviously we wanted to build our new announcer stand. I hope you've all been inside the new announcer stand. If you haven't, get over there. We'd love to show you. You'll notice we have a new large scoreboard format. It was very important to us. We have an aging population of rodeo visitors. We wanted to make sure we are ADA compliant, which included adding an elevator and other concessions. We added four new restrooms, obviously the C of I football viewing area. Most importantly, we want to make this asset that sits on city-owned land something that's used throughout the year. Our goal is to have at least one event per year at that center so that you're getting the maximum benefit of the gift that you made to Caldwell Night Rodeo. You should expect a return on that. And that's what we're trying to return to the city through use of this expanded facility, We obviously added some new safety and security. We are looking to increase seating by 600. That's really important because we're sold out. And so adding seating is a huge deal. And then, again, establishing Caldwell as a top rodeo destination. A couple of months ago, Nicole Cassidy, who's our general manager, and I traveled to Corpus Christi, Texas, and joined a group of rodeo committees from around the country, mayors, city council members, to talk about how you make a city, a destination rodeo city. And I will tell you the constant feedback I heard from everyone in that room is, you have got to promote the city of Caldwell. You guys are already a destination rodeo. You're not doing enough to get people there. Here's the best thing about rodeo visitors. They spend three times as much as any other visitor to your city, and we're a night rodeo, which means you're getting at least one night out of these people unless they head back to the other side of the valley. That's a big deal. You guys have a destination rodeo that we could really grow upon. And the best thing about rodeo visitors is then they go home. They don't stay here and use up your housing and your resources, right? They come here, they spend a lot of money, and they leave town. And from my perspective, we should see more of that in this valley. OK, so phase one is complete. We have a beautiful new announcer's center stand, six new premium skyboxes, brand new bucking chutes. We have to take care of our animal athletes also. And again, a new elevator for ADA accessibility. We're moving into phase two, which is our College of Idaho side. Have all of you been out there? And if you haven't, get out there. We built this as a city resource and a college resource. The rodeo could have built our expansion with no benefit to the college. We spent an extra million dollars to open up the entire side so that your city members can now attend a rodeo during rodeo season and then go attend a College of Idaho game during College of Idaho football season. That was at no expense to the city, no expense to the college. That was an offering that our donors and the rodeo made to the College of Idaho. It'll add a couple hundred seats to every football game and a nice little revenue source for the College of Idaho, which they'll have access to for football games. So pretty big deal. Lastly, we're finishing up with our Rowdy's Roost, which will be the other side of the College of Idaho section. That will be a nice new open area. We'll sell tickets there. It will include dinner. And people will get an elevated view of the rodeo who might not have been able to afford Skybox tickets in the past. So we're really excited about making that offering to the community. And then next year, we'll kick off the Civi side. We'll wrap that section in Skyboxes as well. and add a 200-person open seating as well. So a total will be around $8 million in total revenue raising to get your hometown rodeo to be one of the premier rodeo centers in the entire country. So congratulations on your initial gift. I hope you see that we've made good use of the rest of the money. So what's next? We did want to offer a legacy or community giving level outside of the rodeo grounds. We have these beautiful pillars, which we'll be covering in legacy logos. This will be a great way for us to raise a little money, but also for anyone who's really passionate about the rodeo to leave their name on it. So we'll kick this off here in the next couple of days, but we're excited about this form of giving as well. Recently, I had an opportunity to talk with your new economic development director who had a lot of questions about the value we do or don't add to the city of Caldwell. And one of the questions that he had was, what else are you doing to invest? And so it occurred to me that you all may assume that on a daily basis, a monthly or annual basis, we're not investing in the rodeo grounds. And so we wanted to take a minute just to display the things outside of the capital campaign. This isn't money you gave us. This isn't money we're utilizing to expand the grounds. This is literally what it costs to maintain these grounds year after year. We've made arena dirt improvements of over 30,000. We updated our pan and panels for over 100,000. We updated all of our ice coolers for 30,000. We added new LED lighting, which is required to hold more events at nearly 200,000. We upgraded all of our fencing at over 60,000. We updated our West beer booth at over 30,000. We had to upgrade our fire alarm to make it a safe facility at over 80,000. We updated our bucking sheets at over 100,000 and made nearly 50,000 and other improvements. I feel like I have to run through this because there's been a question about our investments. And I want to make it clear to everyone in this room that every single day our volunteers, including me as a volunteer, are working hard to fundraise for this rodeo. We've invested over $700,000 in the arena. And these aren't things to add anything pretty. These are just things to make sure we can continue to hold a rodeo every year. And that's been over $700,000 in investment. So I thought that would be important to cover as well. Also, we can't get a rodeo held on these grounds if we don't invest in the cowboy. Tomorrow, so this is the first time anyone is hearing this, we'll be making a formal announcement that a very kind donor and local cowboy has donated $100,000 a year for the next three years so that we can get the best cowboys and cowgirls in the entire country to your rodeo. As of today, when we make this announcement tomorrow, your rodeo will pay out a higher purse than any rodeo that weekend in the country. Congratulations. That's a big deal. A couple of the things I wanted to cover. So now we have an opportunity to work together. I showed a photo of the previous city council earlier. And that city council and mayor did a good job of kicking us off of this capital campaign. This council and mayor have a different objective. You have an opportunity to protect the legacy of the rodeo. That's what I want to spend the next 10 minutes on. Our ask is that the city council and mayor do everything they can, just like we as board members are doing, to protect the legacy of Caldwell Night Rodeo. How do we do that? We have a few goals. I'm not going to go through all these in depth, but we are working hard. And keep in mind, you have a completely volunteer board at Caldwell Night Rodeo. People like me are passionate about this and spend our personal time because we want to protect and preserve this rodeo in your town. We are looking to meet our fundraising objectives. We have about another million dollars that we need to raise. As of today, I think that's $700,000, so I'm super excited. We may have gotten another large gift. We want to complete our arena improvements, so you have a state-of-the-art arena right here in Caldwell. We have to continue to add money to our purse. It's something I've talked to the mayor and other mayors about. We don't receive any regular funding from the city. That's okay right now. We're doing fine with local sponsors, but we do have to keep that purse in line. Otherwise, we're not going to get good athletes. This year we had a large donor step in and say, here's $100,000 to your purse. That won't always be the case. So we as a community have to continue raising the purse to get the Cowboys here. Remember that the Cowboys who travel to your rodeo don't get paid unless they win. And so keeping that purse as large as possible is very important. We want to work with the College of Idaho so they can make as much money as possible on that rowdy section while also allowing an elevated fan view. We want to expand on our giving programs this year. I hope to give out about half a million dollars to local charities. We want to achieve large outdoor rodeo of the year. I don't know how many of you are rodeo fans, but we've been really close. We've been in the top five. And what I want to explain when we say we're a top five rodeo, this is really important. We're competing against Calgary, against Pendleton, against Cheyenne, and yet Caldwell Night Rodeo continues to show up with those types of competitors. That is a big deal, and we're working hard to become rodeo of the year. We want this town to be a top rodeo destination, get people coming in, spending a whole lot of money, and then get them out of town to go back where they come from. And then again, our biggest goal today is ensuring Caldwell Night Rodeo stays in the city of Caldwell for another 100 years. So how do we do that? What we need for our city leadership are four things. We need to partner. We could make this a top rodeo destination in this entire country if we work together. We need to promote. We have an elite arena. We can use this arena for anything you guys want to bring in here. As I told your economic development director, bring all the events. You have an event center right down the street that's one of the top now rodeo centers in the Northwest. Use it. Use it a lot. Protect. In recognition of the major investments that we've made to the city, CNR asks that we follow through with the lease extension, which I'll talk more about in a moment. If you want this rodeo in Caldwell for another 100 years, we have got to work through the legal matters affecting this lease. It has to happen. And then lastly, parking. As we all know, parking is challenging at Caldwell Night Rodeo Grounds, and so we need your help. We have been told by the city of Caldwell for two years that we would have some form of parking agreement in writing. I stand here today without that, and it's something we have to get locked up with the city for us to continue to be here for another 100 years. I want to jump into the current and proposed lease. I believe you have likely seen our red lines. I want to back up just for a second and talk about the why on the lease. The reason that we're asking for a revision and lease is because a group of leaders from the city asked us to do exactly that. We sat in a room with the county, the fair, the college, and the rodeo last fall, and we were told to take first pen on a lease agreement, which we did and submitted in November of last year. We are not asking for anything new from you. We are not asking you to give us anything. In fact, we're willing to continue to pay the same lease agreement that we've been paying on. All that we're asking is for the city to take the things that have been long-term commitments to the rodeo and put them in writing so that we can continue fundraising and keep this rodeo here another 100 years. So let's talk about the substantive items in that revised lease. First and foremost, we were issued a 30-year lease. which was fine before we were spending $12 million on this arena. Our sponsors are very unhappy with the term of our lease. Um, there has to be a ROI and just like you gave to the hotel right down the road, we're just seeking a 50 year lease. The hotel has a 50 year lease plus a 25 year adder for 75 years, not even asking for that. All that we're saying is in recognition for this tremendous investment that we're making in your city. Please give us a 50-year lease, which is what was verbally committed to us when we started this project anyways. We're not asking for a change in our rental rates. Keep them the way they are. We're happy paying that because it benefits the city. This is an arena that people can use year-round, and we're happy to fund it for future use of other equine and western events. Parking. I know that there is a lot of tension in the city around parking. But please understand that parking is absolutely necessary for us to hold a rodeo or to continue fundraising. It is the first question I get anytime I sit with a major donor. How can you hold a rodeo without parking? Our previous lease agreement was a handshake deal on the parking. We have nothing in writing to guarantee your rodeo parking. And I can tell you unequivocally, without parking, you cannot hold a rodeo. And so yes, in the agreement, we're asking for the city to commit to parking available to Caldwell Night Rodeo. which we find to be very reasonable. There was an issue with the previous survey conducted on the grounds. We paid and commissioned to have a professional surveyor re-survey the grounds and we are asking for a footprint change for two reasons. One is on the city side of the bleachers, our overhang already exceeds our lease area. So it seems to make sense to expand the lease agreement to match an actual recorded legal license survey. and we don't have control of the front elevation of the gates. So those pictures I showed you earlier where we'd like fans to be able to buy signage, today the city owns the front elevation even though we maintain that. So it's more of a correction from our perspective than anything else in the lease. And then lastly, we want to make sure that we're good partners. Today the lease agreement explicitly states when the fair has access to the rodeo grounds. It doesn't talk about the college at all. We have added sections to ensure that our partners are equally covered. And then lastly, we would love control over Gabiola Field. We feel like we would use it more often than anyone else would. We feel like it's absolutely necessary to hold rodeo. If we don't have Gabiola Field, there absolutely positively is no rodeo. I cannot make that more clear. Without Gabiola Field for our rodeo, there's no rodeo. We move. And so we think it's incredibly important. We also think it's a pretty large cost savings to the city We're willing to fully maintain that property during the term of the lease. We'll take care of the water bill We'll take care of the mowing. We'll make sure that sprinkler heads are fixed and from our perspective It doesn't make sense for the city to maintain that if if the Brody is willing to take control in the lease Nothing we proposed here. We felt like was controversial And so I guess we sit here today wondering why six months after submitting our red lines we're still in the same position of having nothing back in writing from the city. So, I mean, that's where we sit today. As I mentioned earlier, this city council has a great responsibility, just like I have as the 2026 president. This rodeo has been integral to the city of Caldwell for 102 years. I will not be the president that lets the rodeo fail, and I do not want you to be the city council that pushes this rodeo out of the city of Caldwell. And so I ask for your support in finalizing this lease agreement, so we have confidence that we can exist here another 100 years. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Angelique, for that presentation, and it's been wonderful working with you. With that, I also want to thank the other Call Night Rodeo members that are here tonight, so thank you for being here. Councillor Stoddick. Are we allowed questions, Mr. Mayor? Yes, go ahead.

Angelique? Do you have in your short or longterm plans to maybe take over that piece of property, maybe including O'Connor fuel house in the future? Have you talked about it at all?

We enjoy the relationship we have with the city of Caldwell. If the city were ever to entertain, uh, selling or swapping any of that ground, we think you should look at the rodeo first. I have an incredible appreciation for the affair. I have an incredible appreciation for the college. I do. But I don't want to give control of the rodeo grounds to the county. I believe it should be here with the city. So we are happy to entertain an extension of a lease. If there were ever a sale or swap opportunity, we hope you would come to us first so that we can continue our long-term relationship here. Would we be open to fundraising to cover the maintenance of the facilities? We would. We're also happy with a long-term lease, if that's what the city council would prefer.

The reason I ask is because, you know, there might be a time in the future where you might have a city council or mayor that doesn't support a rodeo, and that's why it would kind of secure your future, you know, in this area.

That is our greatest fear and why we are asking for something long-term in writing from the city at this juncture. We believe we have a city council that understands the benefit of the rodeo. It's wild to me that any city council wouldn't. Someone recently proposed the question to me, why would the city give you anything over a 20-year lease? And my question is, why wouldn't the city offer us a 100-year lease to stay? There are neighboring cities that would. So I would turn the question back and say, why wouldn't the city consider a very long-term lease or providing some ownership of the facility to the rodeo?

Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Stoddick. Anything else from council? All right, thank you, and we will be following that up later tonight, but thank you again for the presentation. With that, that ends tonight's workshop. We're going to go ahead and shift over. Do you need to reset the YouTube? All right, welcome to tonight's regularly held meeting, July 6th. It is just after 6 p.m. Thank you for everyone joining us. We have a packed house, so hopefully we can get through everything tonight. First on the agenda is invocation, which tonight will be offered by Mr. Jim Porter. Thank you, Pastor, followed up by the Pledge of Allegiance.

Father God, we thank you for another beautiful day in our city. We thank you for our country as we've just celebrated the 250th anniversary. Father, you have indeed done something incredible here in our nation. Thank you for the many benefits that we have as American citizens. We thank you for the opportunity to gather together tonight to discuss the issues, to weigh evidences, and to make wise and just decisions. Father, we ask for your wisdom and for your presence here in this meeting this evening. We pray this in your name. Amen.

Thank you. Everyone may be seated. It's going to be a packed house tonight. Thank you, Mr. Boarder. As always, we appreciate everything you do. All right. Next item on the agenda is roll call. Madam Clerk.

Councillor Tillmont.

Here.

Councillor Stoddick.

Here.

Councillor Register. Here. Councillor Williams. Here. Councillor Allgood. Here. Councillor Dittenberg. Here.

All right. With that, all council is present. Thank you, council. Next on the agenda is going to be special presentations. The first two are going to be from Kabul Public Works Director Haley Hart. So we're going to have a public or project update on the Kimball Bridge project. And then we're also going to discuss the aftermath of the recent storms, which we declared an emergency. We also have the fire and police chief here to assist her in that discussion. Director Hart.

Mayor, council members, good evening. I hope everybody had a great 4th of July. As the mayor mentioned, I'm going to first just give a quick update on our Kimball Bridge project. I know that it being right in the middle of downtown, everybody is very eager to know when that is going to be completed. First, I just wanted to provide everybody a little bit of information on that project. This project is not city funded, nor is it city managed. So we are working with a group called LTAC, who manages the federal funds that are received through ITD for projects like bridges. So LTAC is the jurisdiction that is actually managing both the funding and all of the consultants that are working on this project that has Kimball closed. I know that it has been closed for a while and there has been some time where there has been no construction occurring. So originally this project was awarded by LTAC to begin last summer. They couldn't get started on their construction right away due to a communication fiber conflict. And so while the contractor and the fiber company were working through this conflict they had to change the date of completion in their contract. that date of completion has never been solidified since working through this conflict. And so we no longer have a date in the contract that LTAC can hold firm for substantial completion. And so that's why there's kind of been this back and forth with construction starting and stopping. And then there was some concerns about different site aspects that the contractor has been working through. But so I just wanted to make sure everyone knew. The contract is not the city's. We do not have any jurisdiction over this contractor, and we're just working as best we can with LTAC, who has been a fantastic partner, as well as the contractor and the designer to keep this one moving forward. Where they are right now is, as everyone knows, the bridge is gone. Big hole over the water there. And we're expecting a crane to be on site this week. for work to be able to continue with getting the piles driven so that the bridge structure can start moving forward. In driving those piles into the ground, there's a few different methods of construction that they can proceed with. A contract and a design does not dictate means and methods at which a contractor may construct. The contract and the design only dictates what the finished product needs to be. And so the contractor has chosen to pile drive these. So it's essentially like he's hammering these piles into the ground. The contract has very clear verbiage that if there's any damage done to surrounding properties during construction, it's the contractor's responsibility to mitigate damage, correct the damage, or pay for damage. They have to do pre construction survey post construction survey and during construction they have sensors that are set up that will alert the contractor if there is too much vibration where the designer has set parameters where the designer is concerned that it's going to cause any. structural concerns for surrounding buildings. So we have a lot of parameters set up to protect surrounding property owners. I encourage the surrounding property owners to work with LTAC and the contractor to protect their businesses and their property. But LTAC's contract with the contractor is very clear that the contractor is responsible if any damage is caused. So I want to reassure the public of that. they are projecting to be completed in the fall I don't have a firm date as we're still working through that final completion date to be added to the contract but we're they're currently projecting to complete the bridge this fall and with that I can stand for any questions on the Kimball Bridge Council good yeah Haley how long a process is this uh pile driving the footings in how long

Is that going to take two weeks. Do you have it. Is there any idea how long that'll be occurring.

I'm expecting it will be a couple couple weeks if not two months. I don't think it'll be a full two months but I'm just want to. I don't think it'll be a full two months of pile driving. I'm just saying it could it. If the contractor faces issues in the field or delays it may delay the whole that whole pile driving to two months. But I don't expect that. I expect the actual process to just be a couple of weeks.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Allgood. Anything else from Council? And we're trying to make sure we keep it out on social media that obviously this is ongoing as the work progresses, but it is a LTAC project and we don't have any control over it, but we're going to keep pushing them as much as we can to keep the project moving forward. So with that,

Move on to the next the weather event for the weather event that everybody experienced not this past weekend. Thankfully it was the weekend before 4th of July got the ground nice and moist to help with fires. I'm sure the police or the fire chief can speak to that a little bit more. But during that rain event we received point nine one inches of rainfall within the first hour. Per Caldwell's storm standards, and our storm standards are what we have developers, contractors, homeowners, even ourselves, those are what we have people construct their stormwater facilities to so that we know how much water they need to hold. We have developers, or we hold water for a 100-year storm event. This storm event was greater than what Caldwell's standard of 100-year storm event was. So when you saw a lot of flooding in your streets that's why it was a greater storm event than what we expect to see within a 100 year time frame. So it was a very large event to say the least. And I think that the the teams across the board did a great job of mitigating what they could. Again this was far more water than we expect to see in 100 year time frame so it far more quantity of water than what our systems are designed to be capable of handling. Our streets department constantly is going through cleaning all of the lines cleaning all of the structures so that when these events come they can expect the water to be able to flow readily. Of course once those pipes get full there's no place for the water to go and that's why you see backup in the streets. We know some of our key areas of concern and before a storm event like this occurs we do monitor the weather and so we go and we specifically clean out those areas of concern so we did go through clean some areas of concern I know it didn't look like we did ahead of time because it was quite a sloppy mess for everybody out there on Friday night but. We did go through and clean out those areas of concern before the event occurred. And then we did have our back truck out all night. We currently have two back trucks. However one of them we have not fully gotten registered yet. We're working through that final paperwork. So unfortunately only one back truck could be on the road. But that back truck was working hard to continue to pump water out of gutters where it could. But then you have the question of OK great you pump the water out now where do you put it. We pumped as much as we could, but at the end of the day when you just receive that much water, it's hard to handle it all. Our sewer department did a fantastic job as well. They did have to man all a couple of our lift stations for the weekend to make sure that the amount of rainfall going into the sewer through our manholes wasn't overcharging our lift stations. So we did have our sewer on call out all weekend, monitoring all of our lift stations to make sure that everything functioned properly. At our treatment plant, because we had so much rainfall going into those manholes, I think you'll note that Deputy Director Harmon during the budget hearing made a comment about how our treatment plant is only receiving about half the flow of what we're capable of managing. Well, we received more flow than what we're calculated to be capable of handling over the weekend. However, we handled it just fine. We didn't run into any issues with treating the water. And so I'm very proud of our team. You should be very proud of your public works teams. And I know the emergency guys are here too, police and fire. But they did a fantastic job of being able to keep up with that large amount of flow. Our water didn't run into any issues, thank goodness. So everyone didn't have any issue receiving potable water. But we will continue to see what we can do moving forward if another large event like this happens, what we can do better next time. But I am very proud of the team, and I hope that you are as well. But if you have any specific location questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Or if you have any questions in general, happy to chat through how Public Works tries to assist in these storm events.

Thank you, Director Hart. And hats off. You guys did an amazing job. Monumental amount of water that came through and cities all over the Treasure Valley had issues So it's not just Caldwell, but you guys worked hard all throughout the night through the weekend We're still you know making sure we follow up look at Highs and lows and things we can do better and what went right and thank you for all the hard work It was we went think tell what 2 33 in the morning at least communicating on Cell phone and then early the next morning so hats off to you any questions from council for Director Hart. All right, thank you. Fire Chief, would you like to come up? And this will just be a continuation of that. And thank you again, Director Hart.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council. Quick summary of events for June 26. But before I get into that, Chief Ingram will be up in a minute. just to talk about the collaboration and the teamwork and the real life exercise that we all went through as a city. You mentioned 3 a.m. and you and I had some of those conversations and the same with myself and Chief Ingram and several other city departments. It was interesting to see all that training and development actually come to fruition. Overall, I think a very successful event given some of the circumstances, Huge shout out to Caldwell Police and Chief Ingram for bringing those extra resources. He's going to talk a little bit about the incident action plan and our unified command. Some quick stats though for you. Caldwell Fire and Police responded to approximately 40 additional calls for service on top of normal deployments. We had two major rescue incidents. 15 people were displaced from the Sunset Landing apartments. It was a total of seven families. and 10 apartments that were damaged. We had occupants that were rescued from a flooded basement on South 13th Street, which required police and fire. We had three periods where we experienced level zero incidents where we had no more fire resources available. Two incidents involved down electrical lines, three motor vehicle crashes attributed to the excessive water on the roads, eight false alarms, probably due to power fluctuations. Two calls involving flooding inside single residential family homes. One tree fire. They do burn, even when it's raining. Multiple trees and roadway hazards. Our personnel went through a couple of chains on their chainsaws, bucking up some downed trees across the roads. Maintaining emergency vehicle access is a pretty priority. They got their skills put to the test as far as bucking up some trees. We provided mutual aid assistance to and received from MidStar and Nampa during the incident. Overall, our crews were up until about 5 in the morning. We brought in additional personnel to staff all available seats on fire engines. Luckily, the weather event subsided and didn't materialize to bring the volume of water that we had encountered on the first wave. Overall, successful mission. I'll turn it over to Chief Ingram if you don't have any questions.

Real quick, any questions from council? Councillor Williams.

Thank you, Chief. You're not up here for this, but can you just tell us what the call volume was on the 4th of July since you're standing here?

Those numbers are still coming in, but we had 25 independent fire responses from midnight to five in the morning. Wow.

Okay.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Thank you. Council Williams. Anything else from council? Thank you chief and appreciate all your hard work on not only that weather event, but the 4th of July chief council mayor.

So in front of you guys, you should have an instant action plan. It looks like this might not be in color. Um, I'm just going to give you a brief overview of what we experienced at the police department that night with resources and deployment of resources, the subsequent days following. So whenever things like this happen, whether it's planning for a 4th of July parade or a critical incident or a massive weather incident like this, that's unprecedented here, um, or some sort of police related incident, we do what's called an, uh, an incident action plan. It's an IAP. These things were created after Hurricane Katrina with FEMA, part of the incident command system, where we can actually try to recuperate money that's spent on resources and such if there is a natural disaster declaration declared like we did specifically in this incident. So if you go through it, you can see this is a collaborative effort between the Caldwell Police Department, us taking the lead with the fire department, and we can't say enough great things about the teamwork that happened that night between our agencies, the county, the paramedics, all the first responders, public works, everyone came together as a city, as a community. And the biggest highlight that I want to stress on this is there were zero loss of life. And if this would have happened anywhere else in the country, there could have been a lot of loss of life. So you have dedicated professionals that operate 24 hours a day here, despite all the things happening around us. They come to work, they turn the noise off, and they do a damn good job at it. And so I'm very proud of the teams that night. So I'm going to read you as soon as we were made aware of what happened within the first 30 minutes, Mr. Mayor, I gave you a situational report, um, that night. So I'm going to read it verbatim. So the council knows what we had. So around 2015 hours, the city of Caldwell and surrounding areas were severely impacted by a thunderstorm that passed by during the incident, which span only 30 minutes dispatch received approximately 27 calls for service that appear to be weather related, including numerous water complaints, downed power lines, residential and commercial alarms, and traffic hazards. Numerous roadways were flooded and still have large amount of standing water on them. As of 2115 hours, so this is one hour after the incident started, calls were still being received and being handled by officers. 10371 Stony Oak, 2204 South Indiana, 11437 Aspen Hill Drive, 1107 East Logan, 212 South 13th Street, Apartment B, all water flooded and evacuated. 15353 Flores Springs Way, evacuated. 1819 Locust Street, 1009 Everett, 1504 Ellis, and 108 Sunset Landing, 10 apartments were evacuated. And in that specific, on the Sunset Landing apartments, our officers went there in waist-deep water with power lines and everything down around them to evacuate people that were stranded inside their homes, inside the lower level of that apartment complex. And we never hear about that stuff. We're not here for accolades. We're not here to highlight that. But that's the dangers that your first responders put in every single day that they put this uniform on. We had officers that wanted to come in from home to assist. And so within an hour, we mobilized the entire department until Monday morning at 0600 hours. That means people's days off were canceled. Their weekends were canceled. And they came to work because we had forecast of two major storms coming in the following the following days luckily caldwell didn't get hit that saturday and sunday night and we were able to resume normal operations monday morning so just very proud of that seven alarms we received in that in that one hour and then there were about 15 traffic hazards all over the city and we only had eight officers working at that specific time and so we're asking these officers to do more with less and no one could have predicted that the way it came in. And I'm just very, very proud of the, again, the collaboration, the hard work that our men and women do, and just very, very thankful for the, for the council, Mr. Mayor, for you, for the support. Um, it couldn't have been better timing coming off the budget workshop to ask for more resources. Um, you know, I always like to say, we don't get paid for what we do. We get paid for what we might have to do, just like the fire department. Uh, these officers, came to work that day, not anticipating that they were going to be swimming in their full uniforms and their guns and everything. And that's exactly what they did. So, uh, we don't give them special training and that type of stuff. Uh, but it's something that we're going to be looking into as far as the IAP is concerned. I'm really glad that we did this because since, uh, since then, if you notice the president, United States, Mr. Donald J. Trump, um, went out on social media and commended our governor for declaring a state of emergency here and authorized $4.2 million to come to the city of Caldwell and the county. we're in so without this receipt right here that funding would be very hard to collect so i'm very proud of the work that we all did together as a county and looking forward to working with the government to try to collect our money for our resources l stanford questions thank you for that chief i do want to say kudos that was once again a long night we were all collaborating working together each department was working hard 100 year storm is a big thing and with that amount of water it's a challenge so hats off to you guys for

putting yourselves not only in danger, but getting those folks out. There was a lot going on that night. And with that, any questions from council? Council, we're all good.

Yes, Chief. Good evening. Chief. How did communications hold up during this? Was dispatch able to keep up, and was everybody able to stay in contact?

Yes, for the most part. Two things I omitted to say on accident. Dispatch had flooding, and so did the county courthouse, which dispatch is part of that building. Ceilings were collapsing and the infrastructure just wasn't there. So they did the best they could and they did a very good job. Communication didn't take a hit the way I thought it was going to, but again, knock on wood, it could have been a lot worse than it was. Perfect, thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Allgood. And can we give a quick round of applause for our first responders and public works? I also want to give a shout out to Kennedy County, the Emergency Operations Manager. She was instrumental in the communication and everything since then. So with that, thank you once again to our city staff for all that hard work that you put in and continue to this day. It's a lot. Next, we're going to hear an update from the Cobble Chamber of Commerce on the completion of the Roger Brooks contract. Mr. Travis Palmer. There you go. Sorry, there's a lot of folks out here. Come forward, please.

Thank you mayor and thank you members of the council for giving us some time today. I am here to summarize the envision central Caldwell 2050 project and respectfully recommend that the city adopted as a guiding vision for future development. This is not a request to approve any individual projects or commit any funding today. Rather it is an opportunity to adopt a long term vision that can help guide public and private investment for decades to come. So we'll start with how we got here. More than two years ago I was invited to a meeting with some community stakeholders and we just were talking about what can we do to help Caldwell in a way that we all recognized how much division there was and how hard it was to get any project any traction because depending on who proposed what there was automatically an opposing side that was ready to fight against it just based on who was the presenter. So we met monthly, sometimes twice a month for almost or well over a year Before we came up with an idea which we then came to all of you and proposed and thankfully you all approved it or the mayor and council members at the time approved the plan. To help fund it and bring back a company called destination development and then we set forth on what we thought was going to be a six to eight month project. and it turned out to be about almost exactly 12 months of research and meetings and planning and recommendations as we went along. This was a partnership between the City of Caldwell, the Chamber of Commerce, Destination Caldwell, and then there was a bunch of additional support from economic development, several city departments, and then several private sector partners as well. During the last 12 months, we engaged in extensive public outreach. We literally facilitated hundreds of stakeholder interviews, meetings, hundreds of hours of research, demand studies, and competitive analysis to come up with recommendations that were intended to build upon and give additional strength to the city's 2025 comprehensive plan. This was not developed in isolation and it reflects both community input and professional analysis of what is realistically achievable over the next 25 years if we as a community should choose to pursue it. This is a long-range vision, it's a living document, it's flexible, and it's a framework for us to use for future decisions. It is not a funding commitment, a construction schedule, or a mandate for any private property owners. It is a living and working document and a community driven vision rather than a rigid mandate. The core principles of the project are intentional growth. We believe growth should occur thought through thoughtful redevelopment and infill rather than unchecked and outward expansion. This helps to preserve agricultural land while making better use of our existing infrastructure building on it. Another core principle is building on existing successes. Indian Creek Plaza has demonstrated what focused investment can accomplish. The blueprint helps us identify and outline the next chapter for Caldwell, and it expands upon our proven successes. Another core principle is creating connected districts, and the three primary districts we've identified are the Garden District, the Plaza District, and the Stockyard District. Each has its own identity, but works together as one connected downtown. What we're trying to do is create places where people can live, work, shop, dine, and recreate without having to leave Caldwell. Based on community feedback, we've identified the top three most popular projects. And some of you saw this when you came to the public presentations. We had little boxes where people could vote with their chips. And the top three most popular projects were Indian Creek Promenade, which is the connected pedestrian corridor linking downtown to parks, the river, and the fairgrounds, a downtown parking structure and conference center and hotel, structured parking to support future hotels, offices, restaurants, conferences, and retail, supporting year-round tourism and helping people get through the shoulder season, and overnight visitation while capturing spending that currently takes place outside of Caldwell. And then a close third was the Whitewater Park. And that's based on, again, votes from the people that attended the public presentations. The expanded recreation in general really came through strongly in the theme and the overall feedback of the project. People wanted the Whitewater Park. They loved the sports facility ideas. But really what they want is community gathering spaces, trails, green space and open space and places and a way to connect to them without having to get in their cars. These projects improve our residents' quality of life while strengthening our tourism appeal. Why does adopting this plan by you matter?

Can we hold on just a second? Can everyone silence their phones, please, in the room? We just got a lot of phones going off. Thank you. Go ahead, continue, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So why does adopting this plan matter? It's because it gives the city consistency, that developers will know the city's long-term vision so will our residents and the whole community will have a shared idea of what's coming forth whether you agree with every part or idea in the plan everybody will at least have a basic understanding of where we have decided collectively as a community that we want to be in 25 years gives us predictability future councils have have a shared framework and an understanding of the vision that caldwell has chosen for its future It's also an economic development tool. The Blueprint becomes a resource when discussing projects with developers, investors, grant agencies, state partners, and federal agencies as well. And it also allows us flexibility because these projects can evolve while still remaining consistent with the overall vision. I respectfully recommend that the Caldwell City Council formally adopt the Envision Central Caldwell 2050 Blueprint as a companion and planning document to the city's award-winning comprehensive plan. Again, I remind you, adoption does not obligate the city to construct any specific project or appropriate any funding. Instead, it states publicly that we as a community have created a shared vision to guide future planning, partnerships, redevelopment, and investment opportunities while remaining flexible enough to adapt as our community needs to evolve. Caldwell has accomplished some pretty remarkable things over the last decade. In 10 years, we've literally gone from being a cautionary tale to a Cinderella story. Indian Creek Plaza has demonstrated what is possible when the community commits to a shared vision. That's what we're asking you to do today. The Envision Central Caldwell 2050 blueprint is simply the next chapter of our future. By adopting this vision for our future, we affirm that growth should be intentional, community-driven Fiscally responsible and worthy of the city that we're trying to build for future generations. I thank you for your time and I would entertain any questions Thank you Travis for that.

We appreciate your presentation tonight all the hard work that you've put into this Council councilor static. Yeah, mr. Mayor.

Thank you Travis is this gonna be a motion that you're gonna bring up to the council and legal? I don't know under new business. Is that possible tonight?

This wouldn't be for tonight councillor static, but we should That's the next step that we'll talk about that. So this is just his report on that, and then we'll follow up with that. Okay, tonight then?

No, it'll be here in the future. Like what future? Two months, three months?

Should not be. There's a couple things we're clarifying, and then... Mr. Mayor and Councilor Stoddart, if I may.

One of the things that's come up through this process of asking the city to adopt the plan, we've gotten into the nuance of how Idaho laws are different than Utah or Oregon or other state laws. And what we've discovered really through thanks to Oscar is that the devil's in the details of how we word it. And we all agree, I think, at some level that we want the plan to be adopted. The question is, what wording do we have to use so that it allows the city the most flexibility as we move forward? So I'm not sure if there's been any new developments or progress there.

So what timetable are you looking at then?

Well, we would love to see it happen as soon as possible.

Next meeting or a month from now or two months? When will you have the language together?

I think the longer we wait, the more momentum we lose.

Okay.

Staff's working hard on it, just so you know. Councilor Stoddick. I have a question. Councilor Register.

Thank you. Thank you for that presentation. I just had like two questions. So in the original Roger Brooks plan when we did the plaza, And I wasn't part of city government at that time, so you're going to have to probably educate me a little bit. But they hired somebody to execute that plan, correct?

I believe so. So take this with a grain of salt because I wasn't here either. But I believe that they hired Kerry Smith to do really the bulldogging on that project.

So is this different than that? Because I keep hearing with this plan.

There's a strong recommendation that if the, forgive me for,

Well, because we've heard that it's just an adoption, it's a guide, it's a complement, that kind of thing, which to me sounds different than let's hire somebody to execute some of the projects. So I guess I'm wondering how much of the city staff, economic development, planning and zoning, that kind of thing has ownership, I guess, of it over hiring somebody to then execute plans if we're calling it

It's an excellent question. The overall point of this is to create that shared and unified vision so that as we move forward as a community, this is a 25-year thing. This is not a 25-month. The idea is if we as a community identify how we want to evolve over the next 25 years and what things we want to preserve and hold most sacred as a community, we have to have a plan and a vision for that. If we want these things to move forward, then the next course is to actually start putting some things in motion, identify what we want to go after first and put the appropriate tools and things in place. One of those would be a strong recommendation to hire someone that could go after these. Is it absolutely required to hire someone to make these projects happen? No, but it certainly would help push things forward. I mean, I think we all know If somebody is kind of nipping at our heels, we tend to move a little faster and with a little more purpose. That's the idea of hiring somebody because their purpose would be to say, look, the community has identified, you know, project A, B, and C as our top choices. Now we have to go and do our due diligence and take the steps to put these things into reality.

But there's nothing in the adoption language that says that we have to hire somebody or that we have to complete projects within a certain amount of time. only that here's some suggestions of what might work, here's how it could work, and then if we decide to do those, they're taken on their own individual projects and not something like the plaza where it's, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to hire somebody and do it.

That's correct.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Register. Councilor Dentonburg, do you have any? Okay. Thank you for that. And just so council is aware, we are working with staff actively on some finality on the nuances, legalities, and such. So hopefully we'll let you know as soon as we're ready to go on that. Thank you all. Thank you, Travis. We appreciate that very much. Okay. That's going to be it for the reports or presentations. Council, do you need to take a break since we've been here since the workshop or just go ahead and move on? All right. Next is conflict of interest declaration. Are there any members who have a conflict of interest to declare relating to anything on tonight's agenda? All right, seeing none. All right, next on the agenda is going to be audience participation. This section of the agenda is reserved for citizens wishing to address council regarding city-related issues that are not on the agenda. Those who want to speak will have three minutes. We have a clock here and one right there. you're speaking please keep an eye on that clock comments related to pending public hearings including decisions that may be appealed to the city council are out of order and should be held for public hearing repeated comments regarding the same or similar topics previously addressed are out of order and will will not be allowed with that if you there's a kind of a general topic tonight there's a couple but if folks could try and continue the conversation versus just repeating the same thing that would be helpful We do have, I believe, 25, either 21 or 25 speakers up tonight on various topics. And when I first called the first name, start off by giving us your name for the record. Once again, I'm going off the sign off sheets. And with that, we're gonna start off with Ms. Sarah Francis.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm so happy to be here. I don't have any issues or conflict I guess why i'm just here is because I kind of just want to serve as a positive voice and tell everybody here what a good job they're actually doing. i'm an Idaho born native born and raised in little wilder Idaho and I remember in the early 2000s couple wasn't a place to be. In fact, it was kind of gang-ridden and ugly. And I remember I graduated 2002, and I decided I was going to go other places. And I did. I went to college other places and lived in other places for about 13 years. And I had family calling me back in about 2017, and I thought I was going to come back home to a bunch of hop fields and cornfields. And I was so pleasantly surprised to see the Indian Creek Plaza and businesses and businesses I just saw a bunch of nice things come in. It had looked pretty similar to other places that I lived that gave places for families to gather. And I couldn't believe the transformation that Little Idaho had made. And so I decided instead of moving on to the state I was going to move to, that I was going to set my roots back down where I started. And I've been here for the past nine years. And my husband and I, we live, work, and we play here in the Treasure Valley. And we're invested in it. And the better our business does, the more we want to be able to give back to our community, because all we see are good things. Last week I went to the Indian Creek Plaza and I saw a farmer's market. I saw a free concert. I see a mounted unit and everybody coming up and petting the horses. And I've only ever seen mounted units in bigger places that I've lived. And so I thought that was something so unique to Caldwell to see something like that here. And so I just, I'm so happy about being able to live here in Caldwell and getting to hear about the Caldwell Night Rodeo and the vision that they're having for growth, hearing about the efforts of our first responder and police, and just to remind everybody that they work so hard behind the scenes, and we feel so safe because of them. I never thought I would see that kind of progression in Caldwell, Idaho. And our city council working so hard, and everybody's just coming together. I think Cabo is doing such a good job. And as I talk to other business owners, the consensus, there's very loud negative individuals that I hear. But as a collective, I hear people wanting to be proud of where they're from and people seeing the good things. And I think if we look, as humans, we're a little polarized, right? And so we kind of tend to focus a little bit on the negative. But I think if we look at the things that are happening all around, we live in a really safe, a good kind, um, communal place. And so I just wanted to leave you with those comments today.

Thank you so much for your kind words. And we appreciate that. Just clarify any questions from council. All right, next up, um, it's going to be last of Olson. Sorry. Uh, What's your first name? Sven. Sven. Okay. Didn't want to mess it up. This is going to be regarding flock security. So thank you. You'll have three minutes.

Good evening. My name is Sven Olson. I want to thank you for the opportunity to address this council. I'm here tonight to speak on the use of flock safety devices in Caldwell. I hope you'll excuse me. I'm not a public speaker, so this is the first time for me. In a community so passionate about civil liberties, I'm severely disappointed by the actions of our local government to effectively protect our privacy. I'm sure you have heard from members in our community about their feelings about flock security, and I'm sure that you are aware of the arguments based on general privacy concerns made by people that fear mass surveillance. While I do feel we have grounds to be concerned about federal agencies accessing flocks of data collections and AI tools, I'm not here to argue that point. I'm here to tell you about the company you've decided to give our tax money to. While flock might have said repeatedly that their data is safe with them, the evidence is overwhelmingly against them. There are over 50 known exploits to access, view, or otherwise tamper with information that FLOXX gathers. These are documented exploits that have been used across the world to unlawfully track innocent people. Independent citizens with enough knowledge of this equipment are able to physically take over the camera systems using extremely rudimentary devices or remotely access them from anywhere in the world. Beyond documented cases of officers from federal and state and city agencies tracking people warrantlessly, anyone with an internet connection at this point can at this moment can access the same information that you can. Independent cybersecurity professionals have raised these concerns with Flock, detailing exactly how these exploits work, and Flock has chosen not to address them. In addition, the tools, the AI tools used to evaluate the data collection from these camera systems can be mistaken, causing unlawful arrests, stalking, and warrantless tracking of innocent individuals. As I'm sure you've all experienced yourselves, AI, LLMs, or large language models are prone to hallucinations and bias because the information they are trained on is inherently biased. Five members of this council were here for resolution 4125 when flock security was originally adopted. I hope that given the concern in this community, you will reevaluate your decision when the time comes. Next time you drive by one of those small black cameras, just remember who else could be watching. Thank you very much for listening to me today.

All right, let's hold it down, please. Thank you. Let's try and hold the applause. I can appreciate the enthusiasm, but I just want to make sure we hear everyone out. And next will be Ms. Crystal Garza. And just to clarify for anyone in the crowd, too, if you have any complaints about officials, please Uh, get them to me afterwards, or you can send me an email. We can have a meeting, but just try and direct any criticism for specific individuals. Uh, later to myself, but you can address the council over an overall issue.

Okay. Hi, my name is crystal Garza quantity. My husband was Christopher quantity. He was killed here in Caldwell on March 22nd, 2025. And, but I found his body March 27th, 7th of 2025. Um, I've been requesting for a meeting with the chief of police for seven months. to clarify a lot of things. I had to pay a thousand dollars almost just to get some police reports that were not fully, fully thing just to, cause I had to hire a private investigator and have a lawyer to get involved. Well, I, my lawyer took maternity leave, so I was mentally okay to come back and full force of my husband's case. So I started, um, requesting police reports. Well, I got this police report right here. And it said that this incident happened at Jack in the Box. Well, on record, we were told that there was never an incident such thing ever happened with my husband at Jack in the Box. That's a lie. So then right after that police report, I got a body camera footage. Body camera footage from a Maverick, okay? I want to read you this statement, okay? It says, hold on, let me get to it real quick. It says, this is from one of the officers, noted. I was able to review a BWC form, officers that made contact with Chris at Maverick. I did not initially know that the camera footage was not saved under the correct, therefore it was deleted. But it popped up last week in my inbox. And so we've been going back and forth and we have not gotten no response from the chief of police. There's a lot of indiscrepancies. Where is the body camera footage from the Jack in the Box location then? Because we were told that never existed. On a police report, I'm telling you, these officers lied and said that this Maverick one didn't exist. Which one is it? They will not work with it. But we did get the medical examiner to reopen my husband's case to reclassify his manner of death because it was determined because word of officers. And I have that phone call recorded too. I'm the queen of receipts, and I have everything to back up what these officers have covered up on my husband's death, and I would like to have them hold accountable. It's been over, it took us 440 days for us to get an autopsy report, which the medical examiner thought we had already, but no, we didn't get it. And it's been over a year, and we have no answers, nothing. They closed the case and act like my husband's death did not exist, but he was killed in your guys' town. Your guys' town. The story, you guys, I want you guys to request the documents of the police reports, the body cameras of the story that these officers said what happened. You guys would shake your guys' head. And not only that, Detective Borsano in her report says pretty much don't go by order because she did not write her final report in order. It's just things here, this here, this here. I asked you guys to get the documents and the police reports to my husband's case and you guys go over it because I'm at this end. I this is what I come to is you guys so just call what you guys know What is going on and what the cops are covering up? I don't know what's going on. But please just you guys look at his reports There's a family.

We have also tried numerous times to contact Detectives to give you guys and follow up. Yeah I have lots of information that would change the direction of the case completely.

I'm gonna need your name for the record. Yes. Sorry. I

But nobody returns my calls. I spoke with you briefly. I did what I was told to do, to send an email to request a meeting with you. I did that twice. Haven't heard back. I'm sitting on information that just haunts me every day that I don't feel safe telling anybody about. My aunt, my cousin, we lost our grandmother on September 11. Then she lost her first son and then now she just lost her other son and we've never gotten any justice. We can't even get you to hear our voice. We are silenced. We don't trust anybody to speak with anybody. Yeah.

I'll follow up with my secretary.

Yeah. If we could just get the ball rolling, we absolutely have to share this. It was never brought on the news, never asked for the public's tips, information, nothing. It was man founded a canal. And that's it.

Councilor register. Yeah.

Yeah. So first of all, I'm very sorry for your loss. Um, I think unfortunately a lot of us are not really sure what this timeline of events are. So just to clear up a couple of things, because I think I read some of your story.

Yes.

So your husband was found?

He went missing March 22. And the last interactions he had were with Kabul police.

And then he was found deceased in the canals. Is that correct?

Yeah, the 27th. And I found him with no cell phone. I did do detective's work.

So real quick, just so I can make sure we have the concern correctly. So he was found deceased, and then you're saying that the cause of death was undetermined, but you guys feel like you have some further information that could lead to a different manner of death.

So do you have an attorney? Yes. Okay.

I think so. I think that having your attorney involved with getting those police reports.

Oh, no, we have. They just don't give it to us. We paid $1,000 and we get half of police reports. I want a refund back, honestly. $1,000 for nothing. I'm telling you, nothing that you guys could get for free.

Okay, so... So basically, you want to be heard with the information that you have. That's really what the end goal is, right?

We want what we paid for. I want the full reports. I want to know why they lied. Why they lied on a police report. On a police report, they lied.

So basically, the end goal is to give the information that you have and make sure that you get the information.

It gives the meaning that we asked for seven months ago. It's safe giving that information. Every time I have tried to call and say, I have information regarding this case that is... it could change everything we'll follow up um i know our city attorney has been working on part of that um and then we'll follow up okay are you available tomorrow well they need to make numerous people reach out to me on facebook i i know stuff i know stuff but then yet when they report the tips nothing

somebody needs to stay in communication with you at least so okay so we can't obviously we can't litigate this right now but what my suggestion is while the city is doing whatever they're doing that the mayor finds somebody to stay in touch with you to keep you in communication and maybe that will ease some of the feeling of being neglected um and then he can follow up with you from there thank you thank you yes any other questions all right next will be

Tony Pellegrino, did I say that properly?

Yes. Thank you. I have a notice of constitutional violations, an opportunity to cure before litigation. And I'd rather talk about the remedy instead of the pollution. I'd like to talk about solution with my 2 minutes and 50 seconds. Can I give you a copy of this so I can talk about how to avoid litigation? Is that possible?

Do you have copies for everyone? I believe you need to hand it to the clerk first.

Thank you very much. Great, because I'd rather talk about the solution.

Yes.

I'm a federal litigator, and I'm very familiar with complex litigation. And the privacy violations with these flaw cameras, first of all, we the people have a First Amendment right to record Officers on duty, anything we can see in public from the public easement, we have a constitutional right, which is a First Amendment. I do not believe that a camera has a First Amendment constitutional right to view us. And it's also a Fourth Amendment violation. So I don't want to get into the legalese. But I went and did an audit today and walked around the police station and I recorded all the license plates and constitutionally protected activity and just filmed people going in and out of the parking lot just to make an example, not to be a troublemaker. Because we've seen a lot of these First Amendment auditors. Some of them are provoking. Some of them are teaching people what our amendments are to the Constitution. And so I directly believe that it's at least a Fourth Amendment violation. and you guys all have a sworn and subscribed oath of office, I really don't know a lot about you and I have nothing personal against you. But there is gonna be federal litigation unless we find a resolution on how to revoke your contract with Flock. I think they didn't give you full disclosure. They're doing updates and spying on people. And if you guys have used federal funding, that they receive payment on, there's internal controls on that. You can't take federal funding and violate the rights of the people. It's a code of federal regulations. It's internal controls. I think the city of Caldwell is a great city. It doesn't need to be drug into more litigation. So I hope that you take my notice seriously, because my rights have already been violated. I've driven underneath these cameras. I've been tracked. And it has my data. And so I am an injured party, but I'd rather, uh, work on a solution with you guys instead of pollution, because I also believe that flock has violated the internal controls by not disclosing, um, the type of information that they're gathering from the public when they're driving down. So I'm not gonna accuse you guys of doing anything, but you do guys do have a sworn and subscribed oath of office to the federal constitution and the state constitution. And I would like called well, would anybody like called well to be a constitutional community? Okay. Well, thank you for your time, fellas and ladies.

Thank you. Any questions from council? All right. Next, James Yard. Is that James? All right. Bree Walker. Bree Walker, would you like to speak tonight? They would have to have signed up. You can just say if you'd like to add anything, and then we'll move on to the next name.

Okay, I can't defer my time, though.

No, we'll just, yeah. Okay. They have to sign up to speak.

Well, to somebody that is signed up, if they need extra time.

I'll grant extra time if I feel we need.

Okay, all right. Thank you. So all I really have to say is that I'm in support of removing the flock cameras. I do believe it violates our constitutional rights and have a lot of concerns, and we'll be working with others to get that resolved.

Thank you. Ms. Heather Larson. Please come up and once again, here's the clock.

My name is Heather Larson. I'm a resident of Caldwell. I have also come today to speak about Flock and AI surveillance in Caldwell. Everyone else so far has tidily expressed their concerns that are also my concerns. I would like to also add that the first person who came and spoke said that she loves Caldwell because it feels safe and it's a beautiful area. And I just want to say that the flock cameras are detrimental to that feeling of safety. Studies are clear about the impact of people being under constant surveillance. They find that while being watched can sometimes improve people's behavior, constant surveillance, like those done by flock cameras, provokes psychological discomfort, decreases memory and attention, and triggers fight or flight responses. While these responses can be beneficial on a small scale, When experienced over long periods of time, they are detrimental to the health of the mind and the body. What it really boils down to, however, is that we shouldn't have to give so many reasons why these cameras are a bad idea. The ability to not be constantly surveilled by the government is clearly a right given by the Fourth Amendment and backed up by several Supreme Court cases. and it is the duty of every government official to uphold those rights.

Thank you. Thank you. Thomas Larson. Please, please, all the applause. Thank you. Thomas Larson.

Hello. My name is Thomas Larson. I had a lot of things prepared on this, but as most of it's been hit, I would just like to mention that calling the Flock AI cameras license plate readers is patently false, as the information that Flock has on their own website shows that it has facial recognition, voice recognition, and it's watching everyone. The reason I even know that these cameras are here is one was put just right around the corner from my house where my children play. And an AI company is now farming my children for data, me. You don't have a right without a warrant to follow me all year long, even if we're keeping it for a month. It is disingenuous. It's false. Take them down. Please, all of you, get rid of them. It's not a cure for crime. All it does is move it. Please help us. Thanks.

Thank you, sir. Appreciate that. Mr. Tyler Cain.

My name is Tyler Cain. I am a resident of Canyon County. The Caldwell Police Department has existed for 123 years. In those 100 years, its primary purpose has been to solve crime. Yet crime has always existed and is never going away. Cain killed Abel out of jealousy for God's favor. Crime isn't new and its nature hasn't changed. It has been argued in defense of these cameras that we are no longer in the year 2000, but the specific year does not matter. We are not subject to the passage of time, but to the unchanging heart of man. Crime is committed due to jealousy, anger, lust, greed, and gluttony. It is driven by the exact same factors and the same human condition since the beginning of time. The same greed and gluttony that drive crime are the same vices driving this mass consumption of private Americans' data. Everyday Americans going to work, going to church, going to the store, or seeking health care are now aggregated into a system capable of tracking their movements in real time. I cannot say this for fact whether this insatiable quest for everyone's data is driven by gluttony or by simple laziness. Our founding fathers built this country upon the principles of natural law. The Constitution does not grant us our rights. It protects our natural God-given rights. Within that document, they found it paramount to prevent the government from unreasonably searching or seizing people or their property. As technology advances, it is our responsibility to look back at these founding documents and apply their enduring principles to this ever-changing technology. A system where 99.9% of the stored data belongs to private, law-abiding citizens, not criminals, is an unreasonable way to find a needle in a haystack. The integration of AI and the interconnecting of cameras has made this system far too easy to abuse and far too worrisome for any private citizen to allow within our public spaces. The police chief's appetite for data has led to the surveillance of every single citizen who travels through the city of Caldwell. This is not about safety. This is a system born of laziness. Prior to 2023, the city had no issue solving crime and serving its community. Now the department serves only itself and spies on the communities. I call on the city of Caldwell to immediately halt this program of mass surveillance. In United States v. D. Reese, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson came to the following conclusion. The forefathers, after consulting the lessons of history, designed our Constitution to place obstacles in the way of a far too permeating police surveillance, which they seemed to think was a greater danger to a free people than the escape of some criminals from punishment. Just as we derive our rights from God, the police chief derives his power from you, Mr. Mayor. in the abuse today. Thank you.

Thank you for that. Mr. Kane. Next will be Mr. Dylan.

Ron Dillon, 15187 Daniel Street, Caldwell, 83607. Hi, everybody. It's been a while. As you know, because you've all seen my resume, I was Marketing Student of the Year at Boise State, so I stay in touch with those guys. The marketing department still reaches out to me once in a while with, we kick stuff around and I'm working with them on several projects. I want to let you know we're engineering a new logo for the City of Caldwell because the one up on the wall there isn't going to cut it anymore. And I think it was Councilmember Williams, it could have been Mr. Allgood, but I think it was Councilmember Williams about a year ago that agreed with me that I said when I said this logo is no longer pertinent with all the farm ground getting plowed under. Was that you, Councilmember Williams? Do you remember that? Regardless. So I've been checking numerous city logos around Idaho, and Caldwell is definitely the one that's the farthest off the mark. I may have to help out Melba, too. I need to go there and see how many thousands of houses are plowing under all their farm ground. Seed Heart of America 1912, which I don't think is going to apply anymore. But I just wanted to give you good news that I'm working on it with some of those kids at BSU, and we'll engineer you a new logo that more fits the new Caldwell with declining farmland. I know that tonight there's some projects coming in front of you, and we know that they'll pass five to one or four to two like they always do. I'm gonna help you out with a new logo. Thank you.

Hold the applause. Thank you. Mr. Andrew Metter? Is there an Andrew? Andrew, is there any Andrews in the crowd? All right. Matthew, here. Would you like to come up? Yes. Taniguchi.

I think everything that I kind of had planned to say has been really said, but I came here with a petition with almost 1,200 signatures. The majority of them are from Idaho, over 400 of them from Caldwell. I'd like to turn that in to you guys.

Please deliver it to the clerk.

I just wanted to say that when Flock was brought to Caldwell, the police chief stood right here, and said that it was gonna be used for nothing except for license plate reading in cases where they were investigating a felony or a misdemeanor or some other serious violations. The fact that they have the Freeform AI add-on and integrated it with Axon Fusis means that they've stepped beyond the use case that they represented when this was started and I just wanted to end.

Thank you, Matthew. Sean?

Mr. Mayor, members of council, thank you for taking my comments tonight. I live here and hope to live here for a long time. I'd like to speak in opposition to the flock cameras as well. A lot of people see these cameras as simply public safety tools, and they are. They're a powerful tool. I'm sure the police chief would love to have them all over the place. That's great. But we've got to weigh that against other considerations. You know, if I look back, like the Uh, COVID mandates that came out, all of our public policy and regulations came through, um, public experts in public health. And so our liberties were stripped because, uh, the public health experts said we need to do these things. So, um, along those lines, do you think it would be too crazy of a thought to think that the next time there's a crisis or emergency that cameras could be used to see who's leaving their house? Um, do you have more than 10 people gathered at a home? So then instead of having to rely on people to snitch on their neighbors, they could just simply look at the cameras. I don't know the police chief, but he probably thinks that, you know, I'm some hick farmer and don't understand these, you know, systems. They just read license plates and it's all fine. We're just keeping the public safe. I get it. I also get it that mission creep is very real in governments. And the next time there's a crisis, you know, not if but when, I believe these systems will be expanded into facial recognition and be used beyond their just simple license plate readers. So a solution, you know, yeah, take them down. But I think it would be good for us to pull the plug on these cameras, tell Flock to come collect their cameras, come collect their last check, and we'll contact you in the future if we're interested. Let's get some sort of citizens committee together. to define a vision to use technology like this surveillance technology in public spaces if we want it and it's overwhelming and people think this is a great thing it will keep our kids safe and whatever then I guess I don't know I guess we'll see if that's the case but I would like to see the city create a vision for the use of these technologies in public spaces before there's a crisis otherwise the city or perhaps federal officials could use these cameras for other kinds of surveillance purposes. So that's what I'd like to ask council to do. Before the contract is renewed, I'd like for the funding to be pulled for these cameras. Let the contract lapse, and let's tell Flock to come collect their cameras. I'll come help them, I guess, if they need some help. Thank you.

Thank you, Sean. Maggie. Maggie Goff? Maggie Goff, any Maggie's out there? All right, going once, going twice. Is it Derek or Daria? Stephens? Derek, sorry. OK, I also look like an A. Would you please come forward?

Hello. I just wanted to give you another perspective on the flock cameras. I don't live in Caldwell. I live in Nampa. But we really love all the stuff you've done with the Indian Creek Plaza and everything. And we used to come here and have fun and spend our money at the great businesses downtown. And when we found out about the flock cameras and every time we drive under them now, once you see them, you can't unsee them. And it basically completely ruined our whole plan for coming over here and having fun and spending money. And we tell all of our friends not to come over here unless they want to get mass surveilled and recorded. And so we just stick to Nampa. We go to Meridian now and we haven't been here for a long time and we really want to come over here and enjoy all the stuff you guys have made. So I would really encourage you to take a good look at these flock cameras because not only does it hurt you know our Fourth Amendment rights but it also hurts your what your projects you're doing out here. And then we don't want to come over here and enjoy them. So, uh, that's what it, and, uh, anyone who gives up Liberty for security deserves neither Liberty or security. And that Liberty is our fourth amendment, right? But thank you.

Thank you, sir. Cade, Cade Sivak, please come forward. And once again, the clock's up here.

I just want to thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh, so my name is Kate Sivak. I'm the current president of the Boise state chapter of turning point USA. Uh, I'm a resident of Middleton and I just wanted to make it clear that this isn't a young or old issue. This is an everybody issue. I think AI is an amazing tool. However, that tool can be abused. And I think we've seen that with flock surveillance. Um, the biggest issue that I've seen with flock, and it's something that a lot of people are hung up on is they don't understand the extent to which flock can surveil you. I'm a pre-law student, so I've been studying a lot of fourth amendment, first amendment, constitutional rights, bill of rights, you know, one through 27. And it's a very difficult topic because of how early we are in this process. And the courts haven't had a chance to look at these cases, understand these cases. And a lot of it comes from lack of knowledge. And I think that if we allow these surveillance companies to enter into these cities, Caldwell's already entered in. I'm trying to keep it out of Middleton. We've tried to keep it out of Boise, out of Nampa, out of Meridian. We'll start to see the erosion of our rights. And I think that starts just here locally. I think the more we can get rid of it now, allow the courts to figure it out and understand whether this is constitutional enough, then we can decide whether or not to implement it at a city level. But I just want to make it clear that this is not something that young people support. Every single young person I've talked to, both In our Turning Point chapter, along with our Club America chapters, along with everybody else that may not be conservative or into politics, we all dislike it. AI is dangerous. It does not need to be in our cities. It has already been proven to violate people's constitutional rights. I look to 1967 case Katz v. United States when it's talked about government surveillance, and it's just blatantly unconstitutional. The courts haven't said it yet. However, I strongly believe that they will say it. I strongly urge that y'all take down these cameras. They are dangerous. You give these surveillance companies an inch, they will take a mile and they have taken a lot more than a mile so far. Thank you guys.

Thank you, Kate. This Laura Shannon.

I'm Laura Shannon I live at 4, 7, 0, 7, Middlesbrough way. Good evening mayor and city council members. Um, by definition, a city comprehensive plan is a public's vision for itself. And ours says it is a direct expression of the desires of the community and that the goals and objectives were developed with extensive citizen input. In October of 23, I moved from county to city and started paying attention to land use decisions. That same month, Caldwell began creating the new comp plan and I got involved attending workshops, studying drafts for understanding and giving input. I didn't feel my input was heard, so I brought concerns to council, including the inaccurate public engagement figures on page 11, which create the illusion of satisfactory public involvement and give false legitimacy to the idea that our current comprehensive plan is Caldwell's vision for itself. The claim of 525 event participants, I didn't witness that kind of turnout and public records yielded only 128 signatures. More than half of those can be traced to city government and the development community and many from other cities. A more accurate figure would have been 59. And the claim of 526 online participants and emails from staff said that they do not have any records detailing online activity numbers. As for the 32,023 project website views, one might assume that to be the number of hits from the public, but staff clarified that if I were on this site 200 times, I was counted 200 times, and this figure includes every time staff accessed it during the 17 months that they were paid to create it. Why would this figure be included in the public engagement figures? Why is this important? By state law, the comp plan is supposed to be the community's vision for itself. Since its adoption, it has been used to create our current land use code. It has been used to guide land use decisions. The city's destination consultant referenced it extensively in his presentation, even calling it the Bible of his plan. witnessed neighborhoods pushing back on housing proposals i've heard pushback on the new land use map that extends the city boundary west of farmway and i've heard pushback on future planning that might turn us into a tourist town always the response is that these new codes and policies came from our new comprehensive plan a comprehensive plan which i do not believe represents the community's vision for itself what are the ramifications of this these published as the foundation for a comp... You're bumping the mic. I'm what?

Sorry, you just bumped the mic with your hand. Oh, okay.

What are the ramifications of these flawed statistics published as foundation for a comprehensive plan? Can they invalidate the plan? Can they lead to legal challenges for zoning decisions based on the plan? Does public opinion even matter? I'd like to see page 11 of the comprehensive plan amended to reflect this project's real public engagement numbers. But better yet, I'd like to see a comprehensive plan that truly reflects the vision Caldwell citizens have for our community.

Thank you. Any questions from council?

May I give this to the clerk?

Yeah, please provide to the clerk. And once again, just hold the applause, please. Any questions from council? I've seen none. Thank you, Ms. Shannon. Next will be Ryan Ferencz. Ryan. Thank you, Laura.

I'm Ryan Farns. I live more outside the outer skirts of Caldwell over by the wine region where St. Chappelle is. I'm over here to talk about the flock cameras too. I believe they're unconstitutional and I believe many young people like me don't like being tracked. Uh, we want to protect our own data privacy. I know it's kind of mixed with some older people. But being here tonight, I'm starting to see that a lot more. A lot more older people are for it, especially more people in their middle age. I've mostly talked to younger folks about it, being younger myself. I'm just out here to say what everyone else is saying. I'm against flock. I want to push against it. I think it's unconstitutional. And if laws were to be passed that we don't agree with, I feel like it would make it harder to fight against those laws. I mean, you think about the prohibition era, you think about how hard it would have been to fight against those, especially, I feel like it's our right to be able to fight. And I feel like being tracked makes that even harder. And yeah, I mean, that's all I want to say. I feel like a lot of good points have been brought up tonight and I feel like even just all the people that spoke here kind of shows you how many people disagree with flock whether that be people that have talked people that haven't talked or even the signatures that were brought in uh that's everything for me sorry all right thank you appreciate that any questions from Council I what's the cutoff between young and old I'm just trying to figure out what I did I feel like it's more like

Like is it like 40 and under?

I'd say more like 50 and up.

I want to know where I'm sitting.

Now you're really on the spot.

Young, old, or middle.

I'm not good at public speaking. Just say nothing further?

I feel like it's mostly people like 50 and up that I'm mostly talking to. And I think that's just mostly because

It's not everyone.

I feel like that's more because, you know, us younger people are the ones that are going to be here for the next 50 years.

Whoa.

You could be here for another 50. Who knows what the medical advances.

I understand. Thank you. Thank you. I know this is nerve wracking. Thank you very much.

And that's just who I've talked to personally. So, you know, don't be too biased on it.

All right. Thank you for that. Next up, Amanda. Didn't provide an address. Amanda, Amanda. All right. Next, it starts with an H. It looks like a Hannah, A, but I'm not 100% sure. It's kind of signed on. Hannah. All right, Kirk. Yes, sir. Please come forward.

Good evening, Council. I came to speak about flock as well. But all the points have been brought up have been covered. And I'd say I strongly agree with those. Something I was unaware of, until a week or so ago, the security cameras, not just the license plate scanners, and whatnot, or on the flock network, you can put your own cameras. So if you own a business or something downtown, you can have your feeds also plumbed into the, uh, flock network. And that's pretty concerning as well.

So that's all I got. Any questions on that? The businesses being able to hook into flock council register.

So if they, um, are hooked into it, can they receive anything back?

Yeah, so just like how they say the police department, if you wanted to log into one of the flock cameras, they'd go through that portal and they could pull up any of the license plate scanners on the streets. But if you're part of that flock network, say like in a shopping center, you could also have your cameras searchable and indexed through the flock system in the same way that the street cameras are.

But can the shop owners receive information back from flock? I think Tyler wants to get in there. You'll have to come up to the mic.

Yeah. Hold on. Please come up.

We found a private camera. It was Motorola, but I mean, same, same thing, um, in a different city where the camera was, um, being used, uh, for their marketing. So they had access to every license plate and in particular, they were using the one, a, uh, you know, the, the, the identifiers to track who was driving past their business. Um, and so in seeing that, uh, they were able to see that data as well as the police department was able to see, all of the data. So they were able to see everything. And so these are also being used privately, not just like shields has a ton installed Walmart Home Depot Lowe's. So this is a bigger issue than just the city as well.

Um, but those are being integrated into, but they're not hooking into the, to the ones that city has, right. They have to buy their own city.

The city can see theirs.

Okay. But they can't see the cities.

No.

Okay.

So they have to buy their own cameras, but they can see their data from their cameras.

Gotcha. Okay. Thanks.

Thank you, and that's gonna be it for audience participation. Thank you for all that participated tonight. We appreciate you communicating, and that was a lot of information for council. Next on the agenda is approving the consent calendar. These are routine items that are grouped together to be approved in one motion unless the councilor approves, the councilor moves for one or more items to remove the consent calendar and considered separately. Mr. Mayor. Go ahead, Councilor Tilma. I move to... Can we hold it down, please?

Mr. Mayor, maybe we should take a 10-minute break. Yeah, would you like to take a 10-minute break? Yeah, let's do that.

Yeah, let's go ahead.

Sorry, Scott. No, you're good.

All right, everyone, could you please quiet down? Take your seats. Plenty of seats now. Feel free to stand, though, if you would like. All right, next was on the, we're moving on to the consent calendar. Councilor Tillmont was in the process of making a motion.

Mr. Mayor, I move to move consent calendar items seven to new business for further discussion and remove consent item nine to the future meeting.

So moved. Do we have a second? Second. Motion is second. All right, council members can cast their votes. Madam Clerk. Just for anyone in the crowd, I don't get a vote on this. So is it purely council? All right, that carries. Now to entertain a motion to approve the consent calendar as amended. Mr. Mayor. Councilor Tillman.

I move to approve the consent calendar as amended.

Motion to second. Madam Clerk. All right, that is unanimous. Just for clarification, Item seven has been moved to new business and item nine to move without further discussion for a future agenda. All right, the agenda item tonight under old business is an action item and public hearing for case number DEV25-000010 and SPP25-000019, which was continued from the June 1st, 2026 city council meeting. The applicant, applicant, sorry, Tripping up on my words. Tiffany Lanos on behalf of BST Dev LLC is requesting a development agreement modification to the previously approved development agreement for Covington Square, Covington Square, and preliminary plat approval for Covington Square subdivision, a residential subdivision with 48 single family lots. This is a public hearing. We'll first hear from the applicant and the representative. We'll have 10 minutes to speak. We'll follow that up with the staff report. And then we're going to hear from those that will sign up to speak. Remind everyone this is a public hearing. So let's please be respectful. I know we had a lot of energy earlier. We're going to keep the applause and booing, cheering, and any other inappropriate behavior at tonight's meeting. And with that, we're going to go ahead and move to the applicant.

We'll have 10 minutes, and your clock is right here. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council. Jeff Bauer, 601 West Bannock in Boise, here tonight on behalf of the applicant to present the Covington Square project. We do have members of the applicant team here tonight, if you have any questions for them, including Taylor Schmidt, the applicant's development director. We do have two applications before the council tonight. The first is for a preliminary plat. The second is an application to modify an existing development agreement. We've reviewed the project report from your planning staff. We're in full agreement with staff's analysis that this project complies with all of your criteria. And we're also in agreement with planning staff's proposed conditions of approval. The hearing examiner did recommend approval of this project as well. Real briefly, a little bit about the applicant and developer, SI Construction. SI Construction is a local developer and builder with over 30 years of experience in the Treasure Valley. They've developed communities that range from luxury custom homes to compact attached product. And right now their current focus is on high quality homes at attainable prices. SI does have multiple properties in Caldwell and they hope to begin development of these properties to address housing affordability and housing shortage needs of the city of Caldwell. Getting into the Covington Square project, this is version number two. So when I say Covington Square tonight, I'm talking about the project before you today. It will get a little confusing because there was a 2019 Covington Square as well. But Covington Square tonight, talking about the property at issue, it's 15 acres in western Caldwell. It has frontage on Farmway to its west, Linden to the north, and Dorman to the east. Again, the site is 15 acres. It's currently vacant with no structures. It was annexed into the city in 2019. This map depicts the city of Caldwell city limits in blue. So you can see, again, our site outlined in red is currently annexed. And there are contiguous city properties to the north and east, as well as some annexed properties west of Farmway down to the south around Euston. In 2019, the project, this property was annexed as part of Covington Square. It was at the time zoned R1 and a preliminary plat and development agreement was approved. This slide shows that 2019 preliminary plat. It provided for 29 lots. And that plat has subsequently lapsed. It was extended at one point, but that extension also ran. And so there is no current subdivision rights for this property. The development agreement for this property indicates that it should be developed in substantial conformance with this plat. The plat again provides for 29 lots, which would be density roughly 1.9 units per acre. And the zoning is R1. One important fact as well is that the development agreement that exists today indicates that the property should also be developed in accordance with your current city code and comprehensive plan. And as it stands today, this plat approved, again, 1.9 units per acre. Each of the lots was roughly 17,000 square feet on average. So it is not currently in conformance with the city code. The density is below what's required in the R1 zone. The property on your future land use map in the comprehensive plan is designated as Neighborhood 2. All of the land surrounding this project is also Neighborhood 2. And under your code and comp plan, We're supposed to be developing projects with a minimum density of 2 and a maximum of 8 in the neighborhood 2 designation. This project's proposing 3.2 units per acre, so towards the bottom of that range in the neighborhood 2 designation. Current zoning of the property, again, is R1. This is the city's zoning map. All of the land around us is also zoned R1. We are not proposing any rezone of this property. The project we're proposing tonight, the 48 lots, fits within the R1 zoning, and all of our lots meet the R1 zone standards. Here is the site plan for the updated Covington Square project, 48 detached single family, Homes gross density again of 3.2 units per acre and an average lot size of 8308 the minimum allowed in this zone is is 8000. Because of the site layout we've flipped this site plan so that north is to your left. I know that's a little confusing but Dorman runs along the top of this slide. This property will be accessed from Dorman. It has one primary access. There is an emergency only access out to Farmway. You can see that at the bottom right of this slide. All utilities needed to serve this project are stubbed to the property and city staff has indicated there's capacity, water, sewer, etc. to serve this project as well. We do believe that the project proposed tonight is compatible with the neighborhood surrounding us. This slide is meant to illustrate compatibility in a couple of ways. First, based on the use that we're proposing, which is single family detached residential, we feel we're compatible. All of the city approved projects in this area are single family detached residential communities. And then the 3.2 units per acre that we're proposing is also in line with the community around us. We've got Manchester Park, one of the bigger communities, to our east, roughly four units per acre. It varies from phase to phase, but that would be an average. Directly across Dorman, Quail Meadow, just under three homes per acre. And then to the north on Linden, projects ranging from 2.8 to five units per acre. in the range of densities in this community that we're proposing here. Covenant Square will have 1.2 acres of open space, which slightly exceeds the requirements of your code. This includes one large central amenity on roughly 0.7 acres. That central amenity area will have a playground, a shaded picnic area, as well as a large grassy field. No amenities are required under the code. So those are in excess of what would be required for this type of community. Sidewalks will be constructed attached along Dorman and Linden. And then on the east, I'm sorry, the west side of the project on the farmway frontage will be a detached 10 foot wide multi-use pathway. And that pathway is part of the city's master pathway plan. Those pathway internal connections are shown in red here. This project has gone through a fair number of revisions. And I bring this up just to highlight to the council that we have been trying to be responsive to comments from our neighbors. The first iteration did propose a rezone. We were going to ask for an R2 zoning designation with 70 units. There was a second iteration that removed the rezone and reduced the homes to 59. That was the project that the hearing examiner heard and approved. And finally, after that hearing examiner meeting, we heard that further reduction and a limitation to single family only was desired. So we've again reduced the density of this project and the total number of homes to 48. So in total, 22 units were lost and the density went from 4.5 to 3.2 over the various redesigns of this project to respond to our community. There are a couple additional conditions on this project that the applicants agreed to. They require single story structures as well as heightened setbacks that are adjacent to existing county residences. Those conditions are already in your staff report, conditions six and seven. This slide indicates or illustrates, I'm sorry, what those conditions otherwise require. A couple elevations to show example homes, we do have we do anticipate a mix of single and two story homes and a mix of two car garage and three car garage homes and in Covington Square. We will meet or exceed all of the parking standards that the city code has by probably about 100% double parked. We do feel like this project complies with the city's comprehensive plan. It's compatible with the surrounding community. The land is already annexed and zoned R1 and has stubbed utilities to it. So it is prime for development. We want to help be part of the solution to the city's housing needs. We also have a letter in the record from the Caldwell School District supporting this project, indicating that those schools that we would otherwise send students to have capacity, and that additional students are needed in the Caldwell School District, and this type of project will be beneficial to the district. So with that, we want to thank you for your time. Happy to stand for any questions, but we do feel like this project meets the intent of the code, and we request your approval tonight. So thank you very much.

Thank you for that. I appreciate it. Council. Council register.

Thank you. I just have one question. So in the original plan that was approved, lots were 17,000 square feet. And now you're asking for 8,308 square feet.

Mayor Phillips, council member register. So I want to be precise. I believe the old plat, which I will get back to here, It had an average lot size that said 0.38 acres, which is roughly 17,000 square feet. And yes, we are asking for an average lot size of 8,300 square feet.

OK. Because you had said that your original pass, the density was 4.5 that went to 3.2, but really it went from 1.9 to 4.5 to 3.2. So I just wanted to make sure I understood that correctly. Thank you.

Mayor Phillips and Council Member, I'm sorry to interrupt. I just want to make sure to clarify. We never proposed a project that was 1.9. That's what the 2019 applicant proposed.

Okay, but that's what you bought?

Yes, the development agreement encumbers the property. I just want to make sure we're on the same page. Yeah, I got it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Register. Anything else from Council? All right, thank you. Thanks for the staff report.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Katie Wright, Senior Planner, 205 South 6th Avenue. Joe Dodson was the original planner on this application that I'll be presenting today. The applicant, Tiffany Llanos, on behalf of BST Dev LLC, is requesting a development agreement modification to the previously approved development agreement for Woods Acreage, Covington Square. and preliminary plot approval for Covington Square subdivision, a residential subdivision with 48 single family lots. The site is designated as a neighborhood two place type within the comprehensive plan and is zoned R1 neighborhood residential. The subject parcel is 14.9 acre parcel located near the southeast corner of Farmway and Linden. The subject site was annexed into the city of Caldwell in 2019 and in 1902. the zoning designation of r1 neighborhood residential by a previous owner developer with the annexation a preliminary plot was approved for covington square subdivision sub19p03 that included 29 single-family residential buildable lots that averaged approximately a third of an acre lots sizes the original covington square plot expired in 2025 following at least one time extension request being approved since 2019. The subject site appears to have remained historical agricultural use until approximately 2020, and no known structure exists on the subject site. The property is surrounded by single family residents, both within the city limits and within the county. Two churches are located to the north, to the west is Farmland and Farmway Road. The subject parcel is located in the neighborhood two place type within the comprehensive plan. Neighborhood two is the primary residential place type in Caldwell. This encompasses residential areas that provide an array of low and mid-dense housing options. Neighborhood 2 is the most prevalent place type and covers areas between major city centers. These areas should develop to be highly connected and allow for a variety of housing options. In general, less dense housing is found in areas further from major roadways and increases in density closer to major roadways. The existing R1 zone is a compatible zoning district within the Neighborhood 2 place type. The applicant initially submitted a rezone with a request to go from R1 to R2 zoning. Following further review and discussion, the applicant reviewed the rezone request and submitted revised drawings in March. Therefore, the review within the staff report and this presentation is based upon the reviewed drawings and there was no rezone request included in this application. For residential projects within the neighborhood two place type, the gross density shall be within two to eight dwelling units per acre. The applicant is proposing a gross density of 3.22 dwelling units per acre considered a low dense project and less dense than the nearby Manchester subdivision that is around 4.5 dwelling units per acre. Note the previously approved plat with the 29 buildable lots that was approved in 2019 would not comply with the current comp plan designation of neighborhood two as it had a density under two dwelling units per acre. The parcel is located in a predominantly developed area in which municipal services are already available. Generally, everything but the parcels to the west are built upon. By the city's definition, the subject project is an infill development just above those 10 acres. The development is proposed single family detached residential homes, which conforms with the purpose statement as specified within the Caldwell City Code for the R1 zone. which states that the purpose of this zone is to provide areas that accommodate single family residential. The proposed density of 3.22 dwelling units per acre is compliant with city code, which allows up to eight dwelling units per acre. The single family detached land use is listed as a permitted land use within the existing R1 zone. The preliminary plat request is for 48 residential buildable lots. Since the time this application was heard by the hearing examiner, the applicant has redesigned their plat to reduce the density and remove the townhomes, leaving only 48 single-family detached lots at the request of the neighbors. The project also proposes approximately 1.81 acres of qualified open space, which is approximately 8.1%, and exceeds the minimum requirement of 8%, based on the plot having an average lot size of 8,308 square feet. The development will take access off of Dorman Avenue to the east. The plot does depict a secondary fire access to Farmway to comply with fire code and has been approved by the fire department. All internal streets are proposed as local streets. The request for the development agreement modification to the original Covington Square DA is to reflect this updated plot if approved. The project has been reviewed against all zoning subdivision and dimensional standards, and staff has found the project meets or exceeds with all requirements except for the sod percentage along Dorman Avenue is below the code required amount and the community pathway requirement is currently partially met, but there are segments that are not eight feet wide. Both have been conditioned to be met prior to final plat. All utilities are available to serve the proposed subdivision. Political subdivisions, including school districts, were notified and provided opportunity to comment. Caldwell School Districts commented that they have capacity and wishes for additional density in the district, needs for commercial uses as well. And Highway District 4 noted dormant right-of-way requirement and its classification as a local street despite functioning as a collector, farmway corridor plans, and limited access. To Dorman and then public notices were sent to all property owners within 500 foot radius of the property Multiple comments were received against the original proposal to rezone to our to and that project as a whole And they noted concerns with increase in traffic Especially along Dorman irrigation water concerns area for children to play bus stop location process process questions regarding existing development agreement On April 28th, the hearing examiner recommended approval of the requested applications with the additional conditions of approval that lots four through six on block one and lots 13 and 14 of block two shall be restricted to single story homes and lots four through six block one shall have minimum rear building setback of 40 feet and lots 13 and 14 of block two shall have a minimum rear setback of 30 feet. Staff's initial review found that the proposed project is in conformance with all applicable city codes as amended, approval criteria per city code and Idaho code, the adopted comprehensive plan and future land use map, all other applicable city adopted master plans, Idaho code, and all other adopted policies other than those items mentioned prior that have been conditioned to be met prior to final plat. And thank you, and I stand for any questions.

Thank you for that. Questions from Council? Councilor Ditmer?

Mr. Mayor, thank you. Katie, if you go back, three or four slides were the school, that one right there, okay. So the Caldwell School District, I understand that statement. So explain to me the Highway District 4 comment that they noted that the right-of-way requirement and its classification as a local street, despite it functioning as a collector. Did the Highway District say, really, this is a collector? What was, clarify their comment there.

Mayor and Councillor Dittenberg, Haley may be able to provide some additional information on what they may be referring to. But a lot of their comment was that there should be no access off onto Farmway and that access should be taken from Dorman Avenue. Based on my memory, it didn't specifically say anything about traffic flow on Dorman Avenue. But again, maybe Haley has some additional information.

Mayor Councilman Dittenberg. Sorry, Katie, I didn't mean to cut you off by messing with my microphone. Yes. So the highway district comment on Long Dorman is that Dorman currently is classified as a local road.

Can we pull up a map while you're explaining this? Thank you.

So Dorman Avenue is currently classified as a local road. We have the major different road types that we have are major and minor arterials, collectors, and locals. The local roads are the roadways that you see driveway access taken off of versus a collector is where you see local roads taking access off of a collector for then driveway access. And so what their point was that they were trying to make was Dorman functions as a collector road, meaning that there's a lot of traffic that moves through it. but it still is a local road where it's classified as local. A lot of residences are taking access directly off of it. And so what the point that they were wanting to make was that they wanted to ensure that they were receiving the correct right of way and the correct frontage improvements per local road standards, but ensure that because it functions as a collector, let's not take any direct access off of Dorman. Their request and their requirement was that there would just be one single access on Dorman due to its functioning as a collector road rather than functioning as a local road. And then, as Katie mentioned, their bigger concern was connection off of Farmway Road with Farmway being a major arterial and us having a master corridor plan for Farmway. We do not typically allow a local road to connect onto a major arterial. either a minor arterial or a collector road to connect to a major arterial. And so they wanted to make sure that residences didn't have a local road connection on Farmway, as that was against their policy and against the corridor plan.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Dittenberg. Councillor Tillmott, and then I'll get to you next.

This question may be for Oscar or you, one of the two. The original DA... had a lot size dictated to it. That lot size no longer meets our plan, but it exists in the DA. The plat has expired, but the lot size still exists in the DA. My question is, can we require them to stick to the DA that they bought, even if it doesn't match our comp plan?

Mayor and Councilman Thomont you could as part of the DA you could request that the applicant like remand it back to staff and have the applicant work with us on a revised plat if they're agreeable to that. But I would not recommend that you deny anything or whatever based on you want them to do the original DA. We need to work through that through the proper motions. But you could you could remand them back to staff to work through that.

So in some way shape or form this DA is going to get modified. Because of the way that our comp plan has changed. Yes, because even if the plot has expired.

Yes. And because the council could through the D.A. allow a lesser density, but we would have to go back and change that in the D.A. and bring that back to you and they would have to go back to the original plot or whatever. So if that is something that council desires during deliberation, the best idea would be to remand this item, table it and remand it back to staff to work through this with the applicant and to not take any action on tonight then.

Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Tillmont. Anything from legal? All right. Councillor Allgood.

Councillor Tillmont had the same question I did. I was just curious about the same thing. Understanding that the previous entitlement had expired, I was concerned of what we're doing with this new development agreement modification. Um, but the other development agreement was outside of what we permit these days. It, we would be asking them to do something that's not in our current plan. If I'm understanding that right.

Mayor and council are all good. That is correct. If you did decide to, um, remand it back to staff to, um, allow a lower density to potentially meet the old plan, it would not be in compliance with the comp plan or the code today.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Allgood. Councillor Register?

I guess I also kind of had a question similar to Councillor Tillmont. I feel like every time we get a development coming in and they have a development agreement and we make changes or we do whatever, They were always told that this development agreement is going to follow that lot. And so if they come back in 20 years from now, they still have to honor whatever we decided. So now what I'm hearing is that they don't have to honor the development agreement that the original people agreed to, because we've had that happen too when we've asked if they sell You know like somebody comes in and gets an agreement and then they sell it that they have to honor that Mayor and council register.

There's a couple things that will unpack with that question Development agreements if they don't make any progress on them they expire in five years. I So that means they have to come back before council because they expire. This one was written before development agreements had an expiration. There's always still something in there about substantial compliance within two years. But the thing that's unique about this one is they let their entitlements expire. So their plat and everything is expired. Had they not let the plat expire, then That development agreement is still good. They could still move forward on it. But because it expired, they have to come back and replat. And when you come back and replat, you now have to meet the current code and the current comp plan unless there's a development agreement and the council chooses to allow them to go with that same development agreement, the original one. Because it's not meeting our code currently.

Right. So when you say, like, so I just need clarification on not meeting the code then because the thing that interests me the most is the lot size, right? So it was 17,000 square feet. Now it's 8,380. So is 17,000 square feet not allowed now?

Depending on what neighborhood they're in, we do have minimum density requirements within those neighborhoods. that matches the zoning that they have. So if I don't think in this one, and Katie, you can correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think all of their lots have this 8,000 square foot, or am I mixing that up with the next one?

Mayor, council, register, all lots within this development do meet the minimum requirement. There's no variance from the code.

The minimum being the least amount, the least...

The smallest.

The smallest size. So there's not a maximum. They could have 17,000 square feet long.

So the problem they're not meeting is their minimum density requirement. And they're off by just, well I guess they're not off by a little. The original one was off by a little bit. It was 1.9 and our minimum density requirement is two.

dwelling units per acre so we're saying you have to have a minimum lot size and they're just right there as opposed to keeping the larger lot size in that development agreement that actually has not expired because that's unique to that but

The development agreement doesn't have an expiration, but they lost their entitlements on the plat, which is where that 17,000 square foot lots were at. So for them to come back around now with a new plat, they have to meet current code, which requires them to have a minimum density of two. And with the old entitlements, they don't meet that.

Right. I understand that.

But they could be bigger. They could have larger lots. They could have bigger lots, yes. OK. Yeah. Thank you. But you would have to approve a lesser density because bigger lots is going to mean the density is going to even be less than two because that all factors in. know because they're bigger lots now they're going to have less slots so they're going to have less dwelling units per acre and so that's going to make them have even lower density than probably even the one point well 1.9 or definitely less than two when did the um when did this expire the entitlements mayor council register um it said that after at least one time extension approval it expired in 2025.

I just hope what we're not seeing is developers buying something that has entitlements on it as well as a development agreement and then letting it expire and coming back and trying to change it then.

I mean, yes, I understand what you're saying. I guess the... Shining light to that if we want to have one is that they do have to come back before council and you do have the decision Like on a development agreement modification, for instance, that's a contractual agreement. You have the ability to say no if you want to yeah Okay.

Thank you.

Uh-huh.

Thank you. Council president register comes for Dilma Based on that just one quick question.

Is there a lot size in the DA? I

Mayor, Councillor Tillmont, I did not see a specific lot size called out. I can go back and look really quick.

So the lot size that we're talking about was only in the entitlement, not in the DA.

But I do want to clarify that there is typically a condition in the development agreement that says you must be in substantial compliance with the attached plat, which then shows those lot sizes, if that makes sense.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Tillmont. All right, thank you. Thank you. Next, we're going to hear from those signed up to testify for three minutes. Just a reminder, everyone, please be respectful. Start off by giving us your name for the record. So I'm going to start with in favor. If there's no neutral, then I'll go against. And I'm going to just read real quick. Those that signed up, in favor, but do not wish to speak. And if you have changed your mind, let me know, and then we'll get to the two speakers. So those in favor, not wanting to speak tonight, is... Kevin Short. Sorry, Kristen Short. David Coach. Sean Harmon. Randy Neary. Tiffany Lanos. Tim Mokwa. Star Nieves. Jeff Bauer. And the two that are signed up to speak. First will be Mr. Brad Doty. Out in the lobby. Okay. And Chuck Camara. All right. Once again, there's none in opposition, sorry, uh, neutral. And we're going to go to those opposed, which is quite an extensive list, but we also have several that signed up not to speak. First will be Mr. Bill Pike. And just remember, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but it's just let everyone speak and we'll work through this bill pike. Remember three minutes.

And my name's Bill Pike. I live at 2722 Quail Meadow Loop, just three houses off of Dorman, where this one way in, one way out junction is going to meet. Every time I look at that, it makes me sick. Dorman is outside, sometimes outside the city limits, I guess. The road is really narrow. When you're talking 48 units, 96 cars, husband and wife, both drive, whatever, you're going to have, it's a zoo. Getting in and out of that complex would be terrible. I think they'll be parking out on Dorman. And right now, when somebody's parked on Dorman, I'm coming out of my subdivision. I can't see anything. And you've got to be really careful coming out. Now I've got this street across from me, and they're going to be coming out as well. It's going to be a mess. So you can't make a turn. There's going to be more traffic. They're going to be parking out on Dorman because there's not enough space in there for all their vehicles. There's more traffic. on Dorman, and you know, it's the wrong place to put 48 units. You can't get out on the farm way because of the speed limit at 55 miles an hour. You can't get out on Linden. The only way out is out on Dorman, and it just doesn't make sense. I think if you mayor city council members were to take a drive out and look at Dorman and look at that area you'd see that the picture that they were showing up there it's not right so I hope you'll listen to us this neighborhood we wanted to keep it with the homes that fit into our neighborhood and this just isn't a fit so Please consider us. I've lived here since 1978. And I moved and built my house in Quail Meadow Loop 24 years ago. And I want to stay. And I want to keep what we have. So please consider that. And don't. Anything with the development agreement leave it as it was at 29 units lower density this high density Traffic is just not going to cut it. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Is there anything from council? Thank you, Bill. Mr. Mayor good comes with someone real quick question.

I Just brought it up real quick And I'm just trying to find out for my own head live on quail meadow loop correct i do i did a quick count there's 38 properties in that loop okay they're asking for 48. yeah on a larger property i'm just curious how much and i'm not discounting you i'm just bringing up numbers we're on numbers i'm trying to decide which way to go here i'm trying to listen to see what we're doing they've lowered their dent they've lowered it down Now I agree, I don't like the fact that there's only one entrance, at least Quail has two, but Quail taps into Manchester, which I used to live in. So I know this area very, very well. I've driven this many times. How do we increase, my question from council's perspective and from a construction perspective, how do I increase Dorman and improve it without buying all that property as a city?

I don't know. I don't have the answer to that. All I know is that 48 units in that 14 point whatever acres, that's too much. And with only one entrance in and one entrance out, and an emergency entrance taking you out the farm way, that's all you got. The road has to be wider. There's got to be sidewalks and you don't have room for all that.

Okay.

I was just bringing it up because I'm, I'm looking at numbers.

I'm just trying to find looking at 38 units and quail metal loop compared to 48 in that little bitty area.

Okay.

So thank you. Thank you.

All right. Um, so I'm going to have a couple that signed up in opposition, but, Do not recourse to speak. Barbara Pike. Thank you. We can have a seat, please. Barbara Pike, Ray, Ann, Melody, Harrell. There was a Brian that crossed his name out. Dwayne and Joan. And I apologize if I slaughter this. Sidon Stucker. Next up to speak will be Susan Brown. Give me a minute. I sat too long.

Mayor Phillips and distinguished council members. I live at 1008 West East. I'm very glad to be in my community along with the lady that spoke earlier. My biggest concern would be as the previous person traffic. Now the gentleman that spoke here a few minutes ago for SI construction, they never brought up any additional traffic stop inquiries. In other words, where's the tape on the road? I've asked for that to things before. And that's all I was wanting, how much traffic it's going to create on that road to go in and out. And that one little entrance is going to be a certainly nightmare. The traffic on Dorman is huge now where we're bigger, we're better called well, and it has grown out. And I, I'm not kidding you. We, we have taken a beating over this last year. And so I'm hoping nobody really gets hurt on that road in a bad way. The lot size is really confusing me now, uh, about what is, what is on the books or what's not on the books or what was on the books. And is it just 48 lots? So 48 houses, that's all the lots they're going to be? Or are you all going to decide on something at a higher number? And if so, do we get to know? I think that the road, the local road terminology and the collector road are a little bit kind of, this is a busy road, a very, busy, dormant road featuring lots of ins and outs all the way up from Linden to Ustick. And I just want you all to be aware of it. I don't want somebody to get hurt on that road unnecessarily because of this overcrowding on 14 acres of property. I really think you all should consider maybe making some very stringent things, even though they have come down, I am grateful, very grateful that the number is down, not up. And I'm grateful that they're one story and not how many stories. I thank you for that. And one other thing. I want to speak about the rain. I prayed for that rain. I was praying for that rain for two months before it happened. And I'm telling you, I was begging for some of the rain back east to come to my neighborhood, and it did. I did not. pray for the wind. So I'm sorry about that. I did not pray for the wind. I apologize to y'all.

I really didn't, but the water I wanted.

So thank you. And, uh, hear our prayers. Listen to us. We, uh, we're here to make a nice community. Thank you. And have a great evening.

Thank you, Susan. And thank you for the prayers. Thankfully no one was harmed, but, uh, we definitely needed that rain. Maybe not the wind. I got some other things I could ask for prayers for. All right. Signed up to not speak is a Jennifer selling Trey Rodriguez and a John selling a Julie Cole. Next is Robert. John. Okay. Sorry.

Go ahead.

Yes, please. Just listening to the, did I say your last name correctly?

So Celine, Celine. Okay. Um, just a couple of points. Um, You're from Manchester. You kind of know how big that subdivision is. It's east of Dorman, and it feeds into Dorman twice, I believe. It causes a lot of traffic. Now adding these 48 right next to one of the feed-ins and outs, I think at least a traffic assessment should be in order if this is going to go through. The other thing is... I've always been, um, I I've never felt that dormant should be and to neighborhood too. I feel like this shouldn't be a high density neighborhood. Um, 95% of the dormant addresses are oversized lots. They're, um, uh, at least half an acre to four plus acres. Um, that's why we're all here. That's why we moved here. Uh, I've been there 25 years. Don't want to move. Don't want to leave it. Uh, but seeing this happening a half a mile away from my house, uh, is intimidating to say the least. Um, uh, just watching the land gets old, get annexed, get zoned, uh, and then having the city come closer and closer. I'm not a city of Caldwell resident. I'm a county County resident. Um, I love what you guys do. Um, but this isn't what I want Dorman to end up being. So, um, I'm here to hopefully, um, uh, see that maybe the comprehensive plan, I don't feel. should be this stringent. It should be something that we can maybe open up and talk about. I've been here five times now wanting somebody to hear that maybe this isn't a high density area. It's a mature community with a lot of oversized lots and a lot of people that have been here for a long time. Don't feel like we're we're not being heard that maybe this is Something other than a high density area. So, thank you Thank you, John.

Appreciate you Coming to speak today Julie. I'm also signed up Cole There's a Roberts Start city in yes tender word. Thank you. I

I'll make this kind of short and brief. So first of all, thank you, Mr. Mayor council members. Um, I do live within an eighth mile of this, um, proposed project. And one of the things we've had in the last, oh, about a month is that the water, the road's been closed because they put in already a new water system. So they've already tapped into the quail metals, brought it across Norman. And it's a one way kind of wait for somebody to get through to get around it right now. Still not completely open. So we're seeing the water system already by taxpayers money going into this project before it's even really approved. Now we know it's in the city limits and it's there. They can do what they want with the city water department. But us locals are seeing it. We were told that it was because of a pressure issue the city was having. That's why this water. line was being brought in. And actually, it's all stubbed for this subdivision. So we're a little concerned about that locally. I guess the density is going to be the core issue of everything tonight that everybody speaks about. And not just the density, it's the amount of cars. If every house has two cars, you're talking 96 vehicles all filtering in one arterial. Now, that's not going to stop people from trying to use the emergency exit onto Farmway, I guarantee it. They will try to find a shortcut whenever they can. They need a fire access. I own four homes. One of them, we just had the same issue with a fire access where a guy took a crossing out and he put people's lives in danger. So I understand this very well that we need this fire access, but how are we going to control it from being used as a short, quick get-around to entering Dorman. Two major intersections, Quail Meadows and Covington, are now going to join at the exact same junction. As stated before, there's an open canal on part most of the way across the street from where this is going right now. So the road cannot be whitened unless we bury that existing irrigation canal. There is no room for a sidewalk on the other side of the street. So I'm just bringing this to people's attention. Again, we are not opposed to what the original density was in the original development authorization that they had. We all know that it's going to go to houses. We're fine with that. We would just like to see it at a lot lower level that does fit, especially Um, to the South side of that project. If you look at that map and see what this lot sizes are, you're going to see that they actually fit it better. And that's all I have to say. God bless America. And thank you.

Yes. God bless America. Thank you, sir. Uh, the next was a Michael, I believe it was for shears sign up, uh, against, but didn't want to speak. And Randy C word will be next.

Thank you So, my name is Randy Seward I live at two nine one six coil metal loop I've heard a lot of these points, so I'm sorry if I'm a little repetitive here But you know, this is all affecting us. You know, this is a pretty emotional decision for where you live You're gonna have to deal with it day in day out so that's why you're hearing the same things over and over again because this is what's going through our heads and So I thank you for the opportunity to share our concerns. I really appreciate that. My position is to stay with the original development agreement for the 29 detached single family homes as it is a binding contract. And I think we keep overlooking that we keep trying to slice and dice this thing so we can make it fit some new code when we're forgetting about what is there already, you know, what is happening to the existing residents? So I have to reiterate my concerns expressed before about the stretched infrastructure especially the water tables in our area. You know we've seen some drops in pressure. We're talking about adding more now. You know the point was made earlier about the pipes being put in pressure constrictors to up the pressure and everything. All this stuff can be measurable. The last time we talked about some development out there went to the county recorder asked for all the reports and the impact analysis. I didn't get hardly anything. on all these key things. I mean, the list was long. So there's little to no impact analysis. There's no clear methodology that I could sit there and replicate some mathematical formula that's being used to figure this all out. The other point being the traffic. I'm not going to go on and on. Yes, dormant as a single filter point is going to create some serious safety concerns. People walk out there on this street. There are horses out there. There are kids on bikes. And then we talked about, what could we do for this street? See, I'm running out of time. So eminent domain. Work with the developer. Make it bigger. I don't know. Something. But the other thing I want to say, linear growth provides more of a natural balance. But what we have now is de facto exponential growth. That's what we're seeing around us. So a proposal to build twice the number of homes less 10 does not conform to the surrounding neighborhood and does not meet the legal agreement for more than 29 detached homes. We're asking for a fair and reasonable amount of conforming development in our neighborhood instead of the one size fits all regardless of the impact to the community. I'd like to note tonight's decision is just a point in time. Long after many of you walk away from this project, we will be living with the aftermath. We are asking that our community be allowed to continue our quiet and peaceful existence so we can enjoy the years to come near a development that aligns with this environment. This leadership team has made some very courageous decisions and we're asking for another one. Please maintain the balance we need in our community by staying with the agreement of no more than 29 detached homes. All we want is responsible and accountable development. Thank you for your time.

Thank you for that, Randy. Anything from council? Thank you for your time. Next up, several more didn't want to speak. Just going to name the names in opposition. Monica Seward, Roger, Howe, Jenny, Howe, Chris Binford. All right. Nancy Binford in opposition and no to speak. And next up to speak will be This is Lynn Waterman. Sorry, mister. Apologize. Lynn, go ahead and come up.

I want to submit this into the record.

Thank you for turning that over, Clerk Lynn.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and council members. A difficulty for most humans is that we often find ourselves in a position where we must make a decision but with incomplete knowledge. Will a used car be reliable? Will the stock market go up or down? Should I buy a new house now or wait? We live in a world where change is constant. Yet legally, we live in a world of contracts. Contract imposes specified rights and responsibilities on the signatories. And because we live in a world of change, over time, most contracts will tend to favor one party over the other. Imagine you bought a house in December of 2020 You might have gotten a 30 year fixed rate mortgage at 2.6%. But by November of 2023, the rate on that same mortgage had climbed to 7.7%. Great deal for you, but bad deal for the bank. Now imagine you got a letter from the bank telling you they were going to adjust the rate or cancel the mortgage. You think, well, they can't do that. The contractual language doesn't allow it, but the bank has a full-time legal staff and way more money to go to court than you do. So the legality or ethics of the question doesn't really matter. fighting the bank's decision is going to be very difficult. We all know in our hearts the bank shouldn't be able to unilaterally change the terms now that the deal doesn't look good for them. So back to the real world example. In 2019, the mayor of the city of Caldwell signed a development agreement for Covington Square subdivision. The flat specified 29 lots. The flat came up for renewal in 2023 and was approved again by the city council for 29 lots. Taylor Smith bought this parcel knowing that it had a DA that specified 29 lots. Now Mr. Smith is asking the city to break the contract and replace the original DA with a new one just because he doesn't like the requirements of the original, the one that he bought. If the city allows the original DA to be replaced just because, then what value will the new DA have? Can't it be broken just as easily? I'm asking the city council to honor the existing DA signed by the mayor of Caldwell and refuse to adopt a replacement with language that is preferential to the developer at the expense of existing neighbors in absence of any consideration just because he wants it. And finally, I'd also like to point out that the current lot size is 648,000 square feet and the non-conformance is off by 3,000 square feet. So if it went from 29 homes to 30 homes, it would be conforming. Thank you for listening.

Thank you, Mr. Waterman. Anything from council? Appreciate your comment. All right. Next up will be, we're just going to name off the no or the people that want to speak real quick and we'll get to the rest of the speakers. Jennifer Graham, Tyler Graham, Sherry Brooks, Ray Rojas, and Tanya Rojas had all signed up in opposition. Didn't want to speak next week. Mr. Brian Hertz.

Here's the clock.

My name is Brian Hertz. I represent the Watermans who own the property immediately adjacent. It's that little cutout on the square that you see on the picture. My clients will be absolutely impacted by this development and of note, It was my client's mother who sold the property to the developer in the first case. And it was on the condition that the land be encumbered to this density that that agreement was struck. And so I'm going to ask this body to honor the agreement and to protect the citizens who enter into these kind of real estate agreements. on the idea that the deal is going to be honored. Now, I'll note, in the original annexation agreement, which is what you've been referring to as the development agreement, everything is conditioned on that plat, on those 29 units being the case. This is significant legally because it will stop the developer from bringing legal challenge to a deviation from that development agreement. And so there's been some ideas that we must continue to ratchet, and it always ratchets in one direction, right, for the developers against the existing residents. That's not the case here. You can honor the agreement. There's no exposure in honoring the agreement. That's what a contract is, and that's important. I assume that the annexation agreement is on the record. The annexation agreement specifically subpart four of article two states, the development, design and construction of the Covington Square shall be in substantial compliance with the submitted preliminary site plan. Any substantial deviations as determined by PZ director from said case file exhibit shall require council approval through a public hearing. Now I'll object to the idea that you modify in this significant way, because to do so will deprive my clients of their rights as existed on the original annexation application. So the original annexation approval in 2019, which there's an order by this body approving the annexation, conditioned the annexation itself and the original plat on compliance with the agreement. And so to the degree that this parcel was annexed into the city, it was annexed on the idea that it'd be 29 units on the lot. And so it's a deprivation of my client's participation It's procedure, statute on annexation, and their due process rights to allow this many more units without a full process as originally occurred. With that, I'll stand for any questions or leave you alone.

Any additional questions? All right. Thank you. I have a quick question. Sorry. Counselor, all good.

So have you been representing this for a while? So are you familiar with the history, is what I'm asking?

I'm familiar with some of the history, certainly.

So, and I'll ask for a correction from our planning and zoning department if I say this wrong, but there were 29 lots, but these lots were, there were 70 doors, dwelling units, right? So the assumption is being made that we have 29 lots and 29 houses, but that was not the case. It was 29 lots and 70 dwelling units. I just want to make sure, are you in agreement with that? Is that your understanding as well, sir?

No, that's not my understanding.

That's not?

No.

Because that's what was testified to earlier. So I'm having some confusion over that because... Which testimony? The gentleman that presented, the developer, said it was 70 units originally. And then it went to a smaller number, and now they're down from 70 to 48, a 22-unit decrease. And so I'm confused how we got there. That's not your understanding?

Can Tech bring up the original? I believe there was three. And can staff clarify?

Mayor and Councilor Allgood, my understanding is that their original submittal, this go-around, was around 70 units. The original entitlement within the DA was 29 units.

And those were single families? Yes, correct. So where did we go from 70 to 48? At what phase did we do that?

Mayor and Councillor, that was based on, I believe, and the applicant may be able to provide better information, they wanted to modify the plat to include some of the larger lots. And I believe they discussed, they talked with the neighbours and came to this decision.

When you say they, are you saying the current developer? Yes, correct. Current applicant.

And just to confirm, there was an original that bought it, was going to develop, and sold it. Is that correct? And that's the cycle we're in?

Yes. So the original owner came through with the 29 lots. That's what's in the- Single family lots. Yes. That's what's in with the current development agreement that they are applying to modify. Originally, they came through with, 70 lots and then they cut that down to 48, which is what you're seeing today.

And again, you're saying they, the current applicant, the new developer that purchased the second row. Okay. I just want to, cause I'm, I'm seeing all these numbers thrown around and it's not making sense to me. How do we get large lots and 70 units? It didn't make sense to me.

Would you like to give a minute just to clarify the interpretation or no, no, I'm good.

I think she explained it well enough. I think I understand that.

And I would say, that we have submitted a written request for mediation. I don't know if I got to you guys or not because there's no procedure for that is my understanding staff. So there is that for future consideration.

Okay. We'll follow up with that. Uh, counselor register.

I think Oscar had his microphone on first.

Yes, go ahead.

Mr. Mayor, there was a request for mediation, but the applicant was not interested in that mediation process, so it wasn't undertaken.

And this body has the power to order it in spite of anyone's willingness.

Go ahead, Councilor Register.

Okay, so I just want to clarify your position as the attorney, and maybe I think there were a lot of confusing numbers, so if I'm understanding it correctly... The original development agreement that was owned by somebody else was 1.9 units per acre and those lots were 17,000 square feet. And then the new developer bought it and today wants to request 3.2 units per acre at 8,308 square feet. But somewhere in between when they bought it and now there were these other ideas that they would do 4.5 acres per unit and some other considerations until they landed on this number. So I think that's where all the confusing numbers may have come into play with what was approved and what wasn't. But so we're clear. The only thing that's been approved ever is the one point nine units per acre. The rest of it has all been conversation. And now we're here to either approve three point two units per acre or mandate it back to staff or go to mediation or. Deny it I guess I'm not real clear what happens if we deny it does the original development agreement then take over or does it.

Mayor and council register if you were to deny these the original development agreement would stay in place but there would be no plot to go with it so they would need to. come back through and reapply for a new preliminary.

Okay. But we could hold them to the original development agreement and then have them just come through with their approval for the plot.

Yes. At that time we would have to stay. It does not meet the code or the comp plan.

Okay. So not moving too far into that with you. Um, just so I'm clear that your clients sold the property to the original developer. with some sort of agreement that it would stay 29 dwelling units. Is that what you're saying?

That was manifested in the development agreement. And so, yes, when the original, so you could see there the little cutout, like I described. When the original was sold, now there wasn't an agreement to that effect between the original owner, but it all happened at the same time. And it was an annexation agreement as well. And so the other thing I would point to is the language of the existing annexation agreement has a lot of protections for everyone in the community, including the city, that if we were to change that agreement would be lost, whereas right now, they can be preserved by sticking to that original agreement.

OK. And so your clients have asked for some sort of mediation. The current developer is not interested in that. So out of, I mean, I don't know if this is even an appropriate question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. If this is changed without having that chance of mediation or whatever, are you here because your clients have a lawsuit?

So I don't commit to lawsuits before decisions. The fact that I'm here is certainly, you can infer whatever you want. The original agreement also contemplates in paragraph 21 where in the event that there's conflict between the code and the agreement, the more stringent protections apply.

Which is the original annexation.

Which is the original 29 units. And so it contemplates what happens in the event of the conflict that we're talking about. And all we're asking for is to honor that. Citizens need to be able to know that their agreements aren't just going to be waited out and then a sleight of hand in a development department is going to dishonor those deals. And so that needs to be enforced.

And just an additional clarification. You said that if the council or the city would stick with the original DA were protected, but in mediation, do you see any pursuant to lupa?

If there's an agreement that struck, uh, at a mediation, it needs to be ratified. There needs to be a public hearing by the council to ratify whatever the fruits of that compromise are. And that's at state code lupa. So it continues to, so that nobody that testified gets like strung, you know what I mean? Circumvented. Everybody can say, um, have a, have comment on whatever the, the deal is. If it, you know, if it happens.

Okay.

And then just one more clarification for just the cities so that we understand completely. Um, If this is approved tonight, then it removes the protections that are in that original annexation.

As proposed, I've seen drafts which purport to replace the existing agreement with whatever the new agreement would be. And I vehemently object to that because there are, like I said, grandfathered contractual rights that exist that the city should be interested in maintaining. that would stop the developer from challenge given the new comp plan and regime. Like you can't be heard to challenge the legality when this annexation agreement ran with the land. And they agreed to it when they saw it.

Thank you.

Thank you for that and thank you for your testimony. Robert Jordan. Robert. jordan all right miss laura shannon are you good okay hannah or hannah one one one two i'll just leave that as the All right. I believe that's it. Okay. Now we're going to move to rebuttal five minutes.

Mr. Mayor, a lot to respond there. Could I have 10 minutes and I'll go as fast as I can.

I'll give you five and then we'll see where we're at. Okay.

Thank you, sir. And planning staff, could I have my presentation please? Thank you. So I'm going to address the comments about the, sorry, Marin Council, Jeff Bauer, 601 West Bannock. I'm going to address the comments about the project, and then I'm going to get into the specifics related to amending the development agreement. So addressing Mr. Pike's comments first, parking. Per your code, we'd be required to have 96 off-street parking spots for this community. We're currently proposing 200 off-street parking spots. So we are not anticipating any parking issues or overflow onto Dorman. There are a lot of comments about this project not fitting in with the surrounding community. And I would just like to toggle back to this slide about density and compatibility. So this project is squarely in line with the surrounding community. Of the projects that have been annexed and that are city communities in this area, Our density is right in the zone, and we're providing the exact same housing types that are in this area. So this project does fit in the neighborhood. On Dorman, a lot of comments about the width of Dorman and that it needs to be widened. We are dedicating 30 feet, half street section, so the west side of Dorman, and improving it as a half street section. So we will add the seven-foot sidewalk, curb, gutter, and 18 feet of pavement. So we will be widening Dorman from our southern boundary line up to Linden. I want to address Councilmember Allgood's comments about HD4, and I think the best thing to do is just read the comment about Dorman. So this is verbatim. Dorman Avenue along the eastern boundary of the project is classified as a local road on the adopted functional classification map. but is evolving to function as a collector as it will serve numerous subdivisions local street access along its length. HD4 standards for local road are 30 feet half width measured from the center line. The city standard collector road section will fit into the 30 foot right of way included and the attached seven foot sidewalk. So what they're saying is it's a local it's classified as a local road but it is becoming a collector. And they specifically asked us the applicant to dedicate 30 feet instead of 26 to ensure that it can be designed and built to the collector road standards. I'm sorry. Apologies. Apologies. I know there were also comments about, you know, this is zoned R1. Could it be developed at a higher density? The answer is yes. So this council has the authority to modify development agreements that is in LUPA. Once you're gone, if a new council comes around and the property's still sitting there, a community, a project could come under the current comp plan and zoning code for eight units per acre. So I just wanna confirm that's right. It could be developed at a higher density. Emergency access. This project does only have one viable point of access, that is on Dorman. And that's a function of just its location. Um, HD four and this city have a plan for the farmway corridor for a future roundabout at Linden and farmway. So we're restricted on access to the north. HD4 won't let us have an access onto Linden, and HD4 won't let us have an access onto Farmway. So Dorman is the only alternative. The emergency access will be constructed with bollards. It can't be used by the public as a shortcut. It is fire department approved. This project is within the city's, I'm sorry, the fire district's rapid response time. We're only 2.2 miles from Station 12. Okay, turning to the da. First, I want to talk about mediation Mr waterman and his Council did request mediation. First, the city attorney declined to participate in mediation. Second. we voluntarily had a mediation with the Waterman's and their legal counsel. So we met on June 4th with your community planning director, Mr. Waterman, uh, his legal counsel, Brian arts and your city attorney. And we discussed this project and amendments we could make and thought we had reached somewhat of a resolution. We disagreed on the development agreement revision, but it was my understanding walking into this meeting and maybe it was wrong. but that the Watermans were supportive of the revised 48-lot plan. So we didn't engage in a formal LUPA mediation, but we did spend time with the Watermans and planning and legal staff, circulated versions of the development agreement to try to reach consensus, but that was not apparently successful. It was entered into the record by Mr. Waterman, the 2019 development agreement. On this slide are a couple excerpts. And I just wanna read a couple of those from you. So in the recitals, the purpose of that 2019 development agreement, right, is to make sure that the property is developed in a manner consistent with Caldwell's comprehensive plan and city code. Section one, all future development applications for the subject property must meet all requirements of Caldwell city code in effect at the time of application. Section 7.1. amendments. Any alteration or change to this agreement shall be made only after complying with the notice and hearing provisions of Idaho code 6509. So this agreement was put in place to ensure the property was developed in conformance with the current comp plan in effect at the time of development and city code. And that's what we brought to you tonight. It's on the low end of your density, but it is compliant. Second, the development agreement itself provides a mechanism for amendment, and it points specifically to Idaho law and LUPA. And under LUPA, it says a commitment made, this is a development agreement, may be modified only by permission of the governing board after complying with the notice and hearing provisions of 6509. So that's what we're doing today. 6509 creates a process and a standard for amending development agreements. The process is a public hearing. The standard is the city agreeing to the development, or I'm sorry, the modification. I want to respectfully disagree with Director Collins' statement that you can just deny a development agreement modification for any reason. That's not the case. So when we apply for a development agreement modification under LUPA, it's treated as a conditional rezone. This was the holding in the Canyon Crossing case, the MTP case that you guys recently litigated. And what the court said there is you can't just arbitrarily deny a development agreement. You have to do so based on rational basis and after issuing a reasoned decision. And so in this case, I believe it would be irrational to deny this development agreement modification because we're proposing a project that's precisely what the city's asked for on this piece of property. So a development within the range of two to eight units per acre and providing open space, et cetera.

So I'll give you additional minute.

OK, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Again, I just want to reiterate, you do have the authority to amend this development agreement. That's what Idaho law says. That's what the agreement actually says. And we are going through the process so that folks like Mr. Waterman and his legal counsel can raise issues about why they think it shouldn't be amended. And I just want to make sure that this counsel understands that you do have the authority and that there isn't any legal challenge that could be leveraged against you for exercising that authority. So with that, Mr. Mayor, I appreciate the extra time, and I'd stand for any questions.

Thank you. Councilor Register, then we'll go to Councilor Dittenberg.

So I want to address a couple of things. When you talk about the mediation, you said that our city attorney refused or whatever it is that you said. My guess is that he probably can't have mediation with you about land use, things that are coming forward. By himself that wouldn't make any sense to me that he would be able to act on the city and have some sort of mediation Conversation with you.

Would you agree with that mayor Phillips council member register? lupa creates mediation under I believe it's 67 65 10 and it's silent on the actual procedures for mediation. So different cities do it differently.

Okay Well, it would seem to me that if any of us met with you privately to try to have mediation, that we would be in violation of some sort of code or law or something like that. And what I don't appreciate is you trying to throw our city attorney under the bus saying that, well, he refused to mediate with us when I don't think he even can. And honestly, by the response that you got when you say you had mediation back there looks more like maybe it was a meeting and not really a mediation. So I'm concerned about that as well as the traffic issues, as well as the protections that we would be giving up in the original annexation. I think those are things that need to be worked out before. I have concerns with one way in, one way out, especially when it comes to emergency services. I have concerns with the difference in the density, all of those kinds of things that you probably can't even address right at this moment. And I also trust the experts in the field that we have here on staff, including our planning and zoning director. So if there's going to be some differences and opinions on what's right, what's wrong, LUPA, et cetera, et cetera, then I would strongly suggest that you have mediation with the Um, Waterman's in their attorney and that we either deny this project or send it back to staff to have those conversations that need to be had.

Thank you. Council register. Councilor Denver.

Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Um, uh, Mr. Bauer. Thank you. I just, uh, a couple of questions. You're familiar with this whole process and how we have to get to the facts and the law question here. You are also an attorney, is that correct?

Mayor Phillips, council member Dittenberger, that's correct, sir.

Okay. Are you bringing anything before us that is inconsistent with the law, either the Land Use Planning Act or city code? Are you bringing anything here that is you're asking us to ignore the law?

Mayor Phillips, Council Member Dittberger, no. It's consistent, and I would add, I think it was Mr. Saline's testimony that you know, the city is changing. And what I would say is I routinely, in my role as a land use planning attorney, ask for amendments to development agreements, not only in this jurisdiction, but all over the state. And they're routinely amended and not challenged legally. It's common. And LUPA, as you can see, in 65, 67, 11, creates a specific process. So yes, it is consistent with the law.

And so it would be your position today as an attorney, as somebody who is reviewing the law, that it is much more reasonable for us to be consistent with the law, as the law currently reads, and with our current city code, than to look back in time and suggest that we should follow an old law?

Yeah. Mayor Phillips. Or an old code. Sorry to interrupt. Council Member Dittberger. Difficult question to answer. I ultimately think that if you deny the request today, and I want to add to Council Member Register, we'd be happy to enter into formal mediation. We thought that we essentially had the exact same conversations that I think we would otherwise have, but we're happy to do that again with members of the council, if that's preferred. Again, some jurisdictions do feel like council members can't participate. They need to be given a report from staff so that open meeting laws aren't at issue. LUPA, again, doesn't speak to who should participate in mediation, but we would happily do that. But to answer the question, I believe if you're going to deny the DA modification request here, it needs to have a rational basis. And I think it's really hard to articulate that rational basis when we are fitting squarely into the comp plan and the project is compatible with the surrounding neighborhood.

OK. So the next question that I have is, was there any traffic study done here? We hear about congestion. We hear about safety. Is there any sort of traffic study that could be entered into public record that says Dorman will be unsafe?

Mayor Phillips, Councilmember Dittenberger, no traffic study was performed on this project because the city's threshold for conducting a study is 100 units or more. Since we're under that, we didn't perform a traffic study. When we had our pre-application meetings with city engineering and public work staff, They didn't request a traffic impact study. We could prepare one for this project if you thought it was needed, but it is a very small project. I can tell you what the trip generation is just based on other projects I've done. So overall per day, we'd be 450 trips per day. In the AM peak hour, we'd be 36 trips per day. And in the PM peak hour, we'd be 47 trips per day.

And based upon your knowledge as a land use attorney, does that exceed the daily trips designated as that, that that road is designated for.

Mayor Phillips, council member Denver. Unfortunately, I can't answer that question. Um, your public works director may have comment, but again, we were, we've received no, uh, agency comments from HD four or the city that indicated. any additional improvements on Dorman were needed or that it wasn't functioning at an acceptable level of service.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'll have some comments once we close public hearing, but I want to ask our city attorney. We're hearing a lot of legalese here. I just want to open the door for you. Is there a need in your mind for us to recess into an executive session on this matter? to hear from you regarding any of this. I just wanted to give you that opportunity before we go too far down this road.

Mayor Phillips, Councilman Williams, I don't know if there's a need to recess into an executive session. I do think there is, under LUPA, there is a permission to modify development agreements. That's clear. That's allowed. That they're not set forever. So it's in front of the board or the council if they want to decide to go ahead and amend that. And I don't know if there's much to discuss unless there's very specific legal questions that the council may have.

So then from your understanding of the law as my attorney, regardless of the fact that a agreement was made with a previous landowner, this body can amend a DA?

Mayor mayor councilman Williams. Yes, the development agreement is between the city and the party the developer That's part of that or the landowner that comes into that afterwards so the agreement between those two parties is what's being asked from the Subsequent owner of the property is to amend the development agreement or enter into a different development agreement so those are the two parties that can decide together whether or not to do that one can't do it without the other and And so that's what this process would be about, is the decision of whether or not to enter into that modification of the development agreement. Thank you.

I need to turn my mic on. Thank you, Councillor Williams. I'll get to Councillor Stoddart in just a second. You said there's permission to, but not a requirement to modify, right?

Mayor Phillips, that's correct. There's not a requirement to modify a development agreement.

Thank you. Councillor Stoddart. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm just curious why you wouldn't want to advance this with the original development group. Do you have a reason why you don't want to do it?

Mayor Phillips, Councilmember Stoddart, there's a few reasons. First and foremost, Developments have to make fiscal sense and it just simply doesn't make sense to develop 17,000 square foot lots In the city of Caldwell currently there isn't a market for it and the homes would ultimately be Million-dollar homes instead of what we're trying to provide which would be high quality but attainable homes attainable homes Are what the city specifically is in the comprehensive plan. This is a slide showing the housing spectrum, what's needed in Caldwell, and this is as of 2025. And except for fully subsidized well below AMI housing, what's needed most is entry and step-up ownership. So 100 to 160% of AMI, and that's what this project would provide.

Okay, so you're saying that If you did build according to the original agreement that you wouldn't be able to sell the homes, is that correct?

Mayor Phillips, Council Member Stoddick, we don't believe that the 29 lot plat is feasible from a financial standpoint, no. And I think we don't believe, if it's not us right now with this DA modification, I think it will be another developer in the future with, with the subsequent DA modification. Again, trying to make the project pencil based on the cost of development today versus 2019.

Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Stoddart. Councillor Allgood.

Yes, sir. Just something I wanted to clear up. I just want to make sure I'm accurate. In my packet here, it says your lots are proposed at 8,004 square feet. Is that accurate?

Mayor Phillips, council member Allgood, are you asking what the average lot size is?

Well, it just says in the packet here, interior lot area square feet is 8,004 square feet. So does that mean that's the middle of the road? Is that the largest lot? Is that the smallest lot? 8,000 is a good size city lot, but is that the biggest lot you have or the smallest lot you have?

Mayor Phillips, Councilmember Allgood, thank you for clarifying. Our average lot size is 8,308 square feet. The minimum in the R1 zone is 8,000, and so all lots exceed 8,000. All of them will exceed 8,000. All of them exceed 8,000. I can't tell you off the top of my head what the largest is. I apologize.

Well, no, no, that's fine. It was kind of implied that some of these lots would be very small, but 8,000 square foot lot is not a small lot. And so I just want to make sure there weren't going to be some small ones slipped in somewhere is what I was going for.

You're right, sir. No lots sub R1 standards. I thought I had them here, but I think I took it out. But the minimum lot size, as council member register identified with staff, is 8,000 square feet in the R1 zone. All of our lots meet the minimum lot size. We're not asking for any variances. So all of them will meet or exceed 8,000.

OK. Mr. Mayor, I just wanted to talk to our attorney as well. I kind of had the same thinking as Councilor Williams about a brief executive session because I'm very concerned that we would require a developer to go outside city standards. We're talking about considering requiring them to stick with the original DA of 29 loss, but that would be requiring them to violate city standard. And I don't know where that consider that a problem. because we hold people to that standard.

So I'm just looking for some advice on... Mr. Mayor, Councilor Allgood, there would be a basis for an executive session under records not otherwise exempt. And if you needed to receive legal advice, there's been mention of possible litigation also. So if the council wanted to go into an executive session, I believe there's a basis for that.

I guess the only question I have is there a discussion that needs to be had that the public can't hear?

Well, legal advice, the public can't hear. Yes.

Would anyone like to make a motion to enter in?

Well, one of two things. Let's finish with public testimony so we can close that. Okay, yes. And then we'll go from there.

Additional question for legal continuance, or do you think we can wrap it up? in that timeframe and a short executive.

Mr. Mayor, I don't know if that's really a question for legal more than for the council.

Yeah.

All right. We'll go ahead and continue. We'll finish up public and then close it and go from there. Any other questions from council? All right. Thank you. Thank you. Right. Since we've completed the public hearing, I'll declare the hearing closed. Council can discuss the application before making motions and voting.

Williams Thank You mr. Mayor I I have some of the same concerns that councilman all good just stated if If we were to have this come back to us with the original Da we would have to deviate from our comp plan and our code to approve that is that correct?

I'm getting a nod in a mic Marin and councilman Williams that is that is correct. I

So we're in a kind of an enigma here, where we have to do something that is going to cause us to make a decision on one side or the other. I drive Dorman frequently every week. And I know the traffic was a lot worse when the intersection was closed at Eustick because the roundabout was going in. But this is not high density. I heard it several times referred to as high density. This is the furthest thing from high density. This is low density. And it's Highway District 4 that's requiring us to make one ingress egress. No matter what goes in here it's going to be that case. because Highway District 4 isn't going to allow this infill property to exit or enter off of either Farmway or Linden. So some of the objections that I'm hearing are outside of our control. No matter what gets developed here, it is going to have those same limitations and restrictions. And so these are the things that are causing me to consider what ought to be done with this project

Moving forward with an infill property Thank You councillor Williams councillor Thomas Just in discussion for all the other councillors I brought up the original plat You're correct, even the original had a single in and out So this is nothing new. So the new plat is no different. I I'm looking at the square footage on these the best I can see because this is a really horrible print. It looks like we're anywhere from high 9,000s to 21 in square footage of the lots. Looking also because I made the comment, I kind of did a rough look of The Quail Meadows subdivision, which is right across the street that this ties into, I'd counted. There was 38 lots. Kind of looked at how much was there. Looking at their lot sizes, their smallest that I could find, doing a quick Google search, bringing up realtor.com, just looking at acreage for each property, was about 9,000. The smallest I could find was 9,000 square feet. The average was running about 12. So my issue would be, I agree it needs to be modified because either way we're gonna end up changing, it has to meet city code somehow. My question is just the further we're getting from city center, it seems like we're getting more and more dense instead of less. And we're bumping up if we cross Farmway, we bump up against neighborhood one, correct? Neighborhood one's on the other side of Farmway, which is even lower density. So now my question just becomes, if we're coming from Manchester, which is at four, most everything's at three on that side of Dorman. We crossed Dorman, we were going into the twos. Now we're jacking back up into the threes. My question is just, is there a way to keep a happy medium between the two, the original agreement, which was closer to two, and keep our lot sizes similar to the ones on the other side of Dorman? that are closer to 12, 11, 12, not eight. So we're talking a 50% difference. So that's my only concern. That's where I'm looking at kind of balancing down dormant of what's going on and which side are we on and which side is, where are we going away from city center? So that's where I'm having a struggle with this.

I think when Quail Meadows was built though, the cost of a 9,000 square foot lot in that house was a whole lot different than it would be today. And so we're in a different environment now than we were then. Correct.

Counselor register.

I have a question for Director Collins. So, well, a couple of questions. Based on everything that Councillor Tillmont just said, we do have an option to send this back to staff to work through those types of concerns or see if there can be some sort of compromise that can be reached, correct?

Mayor and Councillor Register, we certainly could if that's what staff wants us to do is meet with the developer and have a mediation or whatever it is. I just want to address Councilor Tillmott's comment about getting further away from the urban center. We also have to keep in mind that When you get smaller lots and more density, those are located along major transportation corridors. And Farmway is listed as a major arterial in our master plan. So I just want to make that comment.

Another question that I had, the applicant said that Caldwell, that it's not a fit for Caldwell to have million dollar homes. There was another subdivision on farm way that we approved a very large subdivision Which are supposed to be high-end homes just like what was approved on Carter Do you know how close those homes are to I can't remember the cross street? to this Subdivision that we're talking about tonight

Yeah, that development is at the corner of Farmway and Homedale.

Okay, so we're looking at having that development pretty close to this one, but across the street, if I remember correctly.

How far? I'm sorry, Councilor Register, it's about two miles.

Two miles, okay. And that is supposed to be a high-end development. If I remember, I don't remember how many homes.

It is higher-end home. I wouldn't say they're million-dollar homes, but, yeah, they are higher-end.

Okay, so we do have developments going in in that area, though, that are higher-end. So I'm just trying to piece it all together as far as what matches what. Okay. Uh, let's see. And then my other question for you is have we, since we have had this new comp plan, have we ever deviated from the comp plan or given developers variances on their projects?

Um, mayor and council register. I believe the council has allowed, um, a development to do lesser density. Yes. Through a development agreement. Okay, silly. It's not a comp plan amendment, but you have allowed for a flexibility in the zoning code and against the recommendation of the comp plan. Yes.

Okay. Well, it was coming up about the concern about deviating from the comp plan. So we have done that. It's not like this would be the only one. If we said we want to hold you to that original development agreement, it's that's that. So I don't, I, I'm going to make the suggestion that we send this back for an actual mediation and have the parties figure it out and bring it back. In fact, I'm going to make a, can I make a motion to that effect?

Yeah, I believe so. Public hearings closed. So if you want to make, okay.

Is there any specific wording you would like me to use or just that?

Um, Mayor, councilor, register, I think it would just be a motion to, let me, give me a minute just to check.

I'm sorry, I missed the question.

Oh, no, that's okay. It was to me.

It was to, yeah, okay. I think I'm in.

I'd like to make a motion that it be sent back to staff and that they have official mediation guess staff and as well as the original owners to go over that annexation if that's possible pursuant to the provisions set forth in lupa that is that good enough okay thank you that is a motion we have a second I'd like this not to linger

Could we put, could council register put a date certain when this will come back to us so that it doesn't sit out there?

Today's the 6th, right?

The next council meeting is the 20th.

And then probably after that if there's attorneys involved with schedules. So could we say August 3rd? Which gives them a month to figure it out.

I'm good with that. I just would like not to. Yeah, thank you for that, council. I'd like for it to have a.

So, uh, Mr. Mayor council, I think the process here that we would have is that we would, we would undertake a mediation and then it will need to come back for another hearing. So I don't know if the motion that we're setting is for the mediation to take place. Is that, is that what the, what that would be? And then, then there would be a subsequent calendaring for the, for the, the hearing to come before council again. And I think that would be advisable because it could give us time to do any noticing provisions that we would need to do.

Whatever we have to do time wise without it lingering too long. So could we get this all done like the mediation and then whatever decision or whatever agreement they come to and then come back to council for I guess I don't know if it's another public hearing or just whatever we have to do.

This mayor council register. Yes. I just want to make sure that we know that the mediation may not come to any sort of agreement on that. We may come back and be in the same situation, but I do understand that.

I feel like they should have an opportunity to do that since they did not.

So I think going back, I think having a an aspirational deadline or a deadline of some sort for the mediation to be able to take place, realizing summer with calendaring, giving that time to take place and then and then being able to get it on the next the next city council agenda that we that's possible after the mediation takes place.

So you're saying do you have a are you giving a timeline for the mediation to take place or.

Correct. I think that would be the preference. And then if there was anything that came out of that mediation that needed to be, there was any sort of notice or something we needed to do for an agenda to come before council, we would have time to be able to do that.

So would it be appropriate then to ask that they have mediation within a month and then the result of that is brought forward at whatever the next council meeting is?

Yeah, I think that could be appropriate. I mean, it's going to, a lot of this will take place on, as you said, the scheduling of all the parties involved. So I don't We could put that date of August 3rd and we'll work the closest we can as staff to be able to make that happen I'd like to see them.

I mean if it's important for everybody to get it done Just to re-clarify this council desire a brief executive for an additional discussion Can we go

Yeah, we can go into council chambers here and back.

Well, I have a motion on the floor, so should we...

Sorry, we'll go ahead and entertain the motion.

So do we want to clear that up like where the motion for me is to send it back, have mediation within a month, and then bring those results back to council for whatever the consideration is?

So my understanding is the motion, but I don't think there's been a second yet. So you have the ability to withdraw that motion if you'd like to, to, and you can bring the motion back after, after the, if you, we went to executive session and came back in, the motion could be put back before the council.

I mean, if everybody feels like we need to go into executive session, they feel like we've answered many legal questions already. So I'm not sure, but if there needs to be another discussion, then you can do that or you can move forward.

My mr. Mayor councillor register my suggestion would I suppose would be for you to withdraw your motion See if there's a motion for an exec if that passes or fails then we can move on Okay with what yours is before we go into that councillor static.

Yeah, mr. Mayor Councillor I just wondering when you say all parties involved with that be the original owner also of the property.

Mr Mayor councillor static No, it would be the current owner. Okay, and and well, I suppose if I So the lupus talks about an affected person. I don't think that the original owner would any longer be enough We're not the original owner the prior owner to the applicant would be an affected person any longer And said original owner wouldn't be right wanted to clear up.

Thank you Counsel that we want to is there a second on the motion do we want to withdraw go into executive?

Mayor real quick. Can I just clear the record on something? Counselor registered asked us if we had done Exceptions to the comp plan. I was mistaken. We did not do it for density So it wasn't the comp plan We did one for a waiver from the code to have commercial along the front edge of a property So I was mistaken so I wanted to clear the record on that All right, we have a motion

I'm not a different subject.

You withdraw?

Yeah, I withdrew my motion so that we could see if anybody needed to go into executive session. And if not, then I would still suggest that we eventually, I would like to make a motion that it be sent back to staff for all of these conversations to happen.

If we go to executive, I'll open the floor to you once we come back. Councilor Allgood.

That would be my motion that we have a brief executive session. Second.

Motion is second. We need to clarify. Yeah, we will clarify. Sorry, the motion. What subsection? Code and subsection. This is your motion. Give me 74206. I recommend CD. 74206 sub D. Mr. Mayor. Counselor all good. I move we go into executive session pursuant to Idaho code 74-206 subsection B We have a motion for executive Second now session for motion in a second counsel, please madam clerk and Just for everyone in the room feel free to stay we do have bathrooms we're gonna retreat to council chambers and have this discussion if it's approved and And we will have a brief break before we return.

Oh, what am I doing here?

Hold on just a second.

Got to switch and vote. I was on the wrong freaking screen. No, no, you got to switch. You're on the house screen. You got to get back in. He fell asleep. Do you want to go in?

Stand by. All right, it is unanimous. We are now in executive.

Do we want to go behind or? Yeah.

Thank you, we are back from executive session. Do we have a motion to executive session?

Mr. Mayor, I move that we leave executive session, resume the meeting.

All right, we have a motion. Second. Second. Motion to second. Second. Sorry, all those in favor, vote aye.

Aye.

All right, we are out of executive session, back into normal session. With that, council. Do we have a motion?

Mr. Mayor, just so we're all on the same page, coming back from executive session, the public hearing portion was closed. A councilor registered had a motion that she withdrew. The council then elected to go into executive session. No decisions were made in that executive session. So now we're essentially in the same position as if the public hearing had just closed with being able to entertain motions.

Yes, affirmative. Thank you for that clarification. So we're now into the motion section. of the hearing from council. Councilor Allgood.

Mr. Mayor, based on Colwell City Code and the comprehensive plan and the testimony and evidence and record and the facts presented, I move that the development agreement modification be approved subject to the conditions as presented.

Second. We have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk. And just to confirm, this is to approve, you're voting to approve the DA, correct? All right, we have a tie. So I'm going to also vote no. We have another motion.

No, there does not need to be another motion if you're not taking it. If the motion for the development agreement modification was denied.

So we return to the original DA and we move on to the next item.

Yeah, the motion was, the motion to approve it failed. So now we can take another motion.

Yes.

So we are required to take another motion for clarification or we do not have to?

Think the the suggestion is to take another motion up Council president register Okay, and I just want to be clear that we were told that we do not need a reason for denial. Is that correct?

Mr. Mayor councilman register that that's correct. I don't believe they're my legal advice is there does not need to be a reason given for Denial of a modificate of a development agreement.

Okay, so based upon Caldwell City Code the comprehensive plan and And upon the testimony, evidence, and record, and the facts presented, I move that the development agreement modification request be denied.

Second.

I have a motion and a second for denial of the DA modification, just for the public. Madam Clerk? All right. That's a tie. I'm going to vote in favor of the denial. All right. We'll move on. Do we need to take a quick break? Okay. All right. We're going to go ahead and let me jump ahead. Now we're going to move to new business. First item on the agenda is the consent calendar. Item number seven is move new business for discussion. Second calendar item number seven was to approve the updated real estate lease agreement with Kenney County for the call event center and Kenney County Fairgrounds. Just to clarify, this agreement was just for this fair season. Councilor Williams.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I had a concern about some of the verbiage in there, and Oscar looked at it, and I think we agreed it's something that could be cleaned up for next year, but that it was vague, or did you decide we would Clean it up for this one, Oscar. Sorry to put you on the spot there, but I want to start with that because that was my initial concern.

Mr. Mayor, Councilman Williams, in reviewing it, I believe the language is sufficient, although it's not exactly the model of clarity that we'd like. I think that language makes it clear that the lease does have a definite termination date that's listed in there.

Yeah, it was in reference to the termination date, and the grammar was wonky.

Yeah, there was an extra word that appeared, but I don't think the extra word modified it in any way that that would create undue confusion.

Okay. And I think it's probably too late in the year for us to be too aggressive with a lease for the Canyon County fair because the fair starts in a matter of days at this point. However, I do want to on the record say that during our budget hearing, I asked our, or not our budget hearing, I'm sorry, in our joint workshop with the commissioners, I asked specifically if they were charging us for square footage for attorney's space, and they said no, but a public records request was done by somebody, and then it was posted on the internet. Someone screenshotted it and showed it to me, and indeed it appears that they are. So my concern is this, and I bring it up at this point for a reason. Our lease gives them Caldwell property for nothing. They're not even paying for water or sewer usage of that fairground. And I think it's unfortunate that the taxpayers who already paid for that office space are being asked to pay for it again. And I haven't checked with Nampa what their agreement is with Nampa for misdemeanor prosecution. But if they're doing the same thing in charging Nampa for office space, the taxpayers are paying for it three times. And it just seems like every time the county comes to us, they want something for nothing. And when they come at us, it's we want to tax you for what the taxpayers have already paid. And so I just want to make sure that is I don't know if you recall that document, Mayor, but that was a conversation or an email with you that was presented to me where it showed in the spreadsheet they were charging us per square foot for office space. Do you recall that?

I believe it was several pages in, right, on the document.

It was on a spreadsheet.

Sorry, a spreadsheet, but there was several documents that we've gotten, I believe, Oscar provided today. So, yes, I recall that.

Okay, so I just have a real problem with that, and I have a problem with us allowing them to use this water and sewer for nothing. And so I think next year we need to take a closer look at this lease. But having said that, I would move that we approve the lease for the Canyon County Fair to expire at the end of this fair season. Second.

Just to confirm for the city attorney, that's what it currently states, right? Is this... August, correct? Do you have the exact date?

Mr. Mayor, it'll take me a moment to bring it up, but I believe it was August 15th. But I can double check on that if you want.

All right, thank you. Any further discussion? You had a motion, correct?

Yes. Yes, and a second.

Second, OK. Madam Clerk? All right, the motion carries for the Cannon County Fair Lease, and we'll have follow-up on that for the next year, what that looks like.

I think we ought to follow up on us having to pay for office space, Mr. Mayor. I don't think that's fair to the taxpayers.

We can have that additional discussion, yes. I don't know what the rest of the council thinks about that, but that seems... We can follow up and see clarifying on that between the statement and then the spreadsheet. All right. With that, we're going to move on to the next item. Under new business, there's an action item in public hearing for case number SPP25-00008 and ZON25-00004. The applicant, Land Architect LLC, on behalf of Patriots Landing LLC, is requesting a rezone of three parcels from R1 to R2. Additionally, the applicant is requesting approval from preliminary plot. for patriots landing subdivision a residential subdivision with 12 buildable lots which will include 11 duplex structures and one detached single family residential unit this is a public hearing we'll first hear from the applicant or the representative who have 10 minutes to speak of course we'll follow up with the staff report and then the public hearing with that we're going to go ahead and move forward with the applicant

Mayor Phillips, members of the Council, this has been a great evening. I appreciate your time and continued attention to development matters. Staff, we get that presentation up on. Is that the that's the city presentation? Oh. While they're pulling that up, so Patriots Landing is envisioned as a project that is is not deed restricted to Patriots or two veterans, I should say, but it is Intended to serve that market to provide them ownership in real estate and an economy where it is difficult to purchase homes We see this is a really thoughtful development that's utilizing the existing infrastructure That is an infill project that we are proposing duplex structures for the most part one single-family structure And it's really allowing and dovetailing with the neighborhood to use at seven units of dwelling acre But with the two to eight units being the standard The project sits right up against I-84 here so that when you're driving down there, you see the big sound wall there. So this is what's on the south side of that. So from a perimeter standpoint of this property, you're surrounded by large acreages on the east and the west. You can see that you have I-84 there on the south. What's unique about this property, and we've worked a lot with staff and city engineering on this because there's some unique elements to it. One is Owyhee Street, which is on the Bottom there running east to west and it cut the that's already dedicated right away that bisects the property That's we intended initially to try to reroute that but staff wanted to city engineering wanted to maintain that same right away dedication So we have planned for that Here's an aerial the property that this outlines it a little bit better You can see where that right away connects Syringa on the north and then why he comes through on that that southeast corner Butts up against the the interstate there Hill Lane is another part of this project which we'll get into a Unique portion of that so on the east side there. It's a 15-foot Dedicated it's a 50 foot right away right now. We don't own that property This it's been conversation. Essentially. What do we do with it where we're headed with this is to partner or work in collaboration with the adjacent development of Daniel Isbell there to the east. Isbell development, which I believe will be before you here in the near future, as a pedestrian path that traverses down that hill lane. On the left here is the survey and plat. So you can see there's pretty extensive irrigation on the site. There's kind of running north to south on the left side and kind of southwest in the middle there are some natural irrigation systems. We're intending to keep the discharge points and the entrance points the same. We are undergrounding pipe, putting those underground. That was a issue that the neighbors brought up at our neighborhood meeting, really concerned about how the irrigation is gonna affect their property. The intent is to keep everything the same. We're just rerouting that underground pipes. with the exception of that western one, so the large one that you see running north-south, the intent is to push that to the west boundary and have that be an open ditch in a common lot, which we'll get into here. So on the west side, you see kind of a little bit of a darker hatch. The upper right diagram shows it a little better. We have a common lot on the west and north, as well as on the east. And so that is intended to, it was, We went back and forth so many times with this. I'm trying to remember what the intent of the common lot there was. But essentially, it allowed an additional buffer. It complied with the 15-foot buffer to the adjacent residence there. The lower right diagram indicates unit types. So we're changing up the massing and the colors in the subdivision so they're not all the same building throughout. And you can see that we have mostly attached duplexes with large backyards. These would be fenced in between, so each of those individual units would have their own private yard back there. And then we have one single family on the lower left. Open space, we are sitting at about 8.5% of the 8% required. You can see in the middle there we have two large open space areas that are centrally located with a common path that's connecting those and providing greater connectivity. The prior site plan here is the the prior one before we updated the path and had a collaboration with the Isbell subdivision so the on the Right diagram there. You'll see that that pedestrian path We are proposing bollards on the north side. So Hill Lane would terminate to a pedestrian path and bollards Location and then where that note saying future connection that is lined it lined up with the proposed development of Isbell subdivision should that continue Now, Hill Lane, what's interesting here is you see on that graphic on the left on the aerial, when Owyhee Street is developed, that lower southern lot that's accessed off of Hill Lane currently would no longer need that Hill Lane access. And so the intent there is that they would take access off of Owyhee Street. Here's a couple of photos of the existing site. So this is standing on Syringa and the upper right photo looking west and then the lower right photo is looking east. A point of contention that came up quite a bit in our neighborhood meeting was the speed currently on Syringa. So from feedback from the neighbors, the current speed on Syringa is out of control, to put it bluntly, is what we've been told. I don't live in this proximity, but you know, We are open to traffic mitigation measures. We do feel like we're improving the circulation by connecting Hawaii through to Syringa. Even though we are putting more units here, we're improving the public infrastructure, utilizing the existing sewer water, and improving the city's connectivity that aligns to their neighborhood to comp plan designation. This is the existing homes that are on that north right off of Serena there. You'll see the right away lines that are currently on that left diagram. They do butt up right against those properties. This is just the way that this was plotted and those structures were built. We did ask staff if we could omit one of the sidewalks on the public road to allow a little bit extra landscape and buffer. City engineering required that to maintain the typical standard street section with sidewalks on both sides and a 33-foot right-of-way, which is what we're proposing currently. This is the existing house in the upper right image that is off of Syringa, that you're standing basically where that new drive would be connected through to Syringa. Mayor Mrakas, here's Hawaii street, so this is looking West at the termination of Hawaii street currently there's a property there that is utilizing that city public right away for their their entrance, so there is some you know. Mayor Mrakas, Things to be worked out in that nature, but that currently is city public right away. The homes that we're proposing are two-story. These are duplexes stepping back. Currently, they're two-car garages. The parking on this is similar to the prior development. We are about double. Forty-eight stalls required. I believe 98 are provided, so ample parking. These are the two kind of variations of massing and color as well. And then that single-family unit is as well to the south and then we have an additional unit type here. A height on the building about 30 feet or about 27 feet really that 30 foot dimension goes to the bottom of the top of the foundation there. So a little under 30 feet and these are some images showing the general character of the neighborhood. And with that, I'll stand for questions. But we look forward to working with the city. And staff has been great so far to work through these complicated, unique challenges. And we're excited to move this project forward. I'll stand for questions.

Thank you. Thank you for that. Council? Council, all good?

Yes, sir. You had neighborhood meetings?

We did. Two.

Two. How did they go?

They were well. The first one, probably eight to 10 people showed up. A lot of concerns, like I mentioned, the irrigation. traffic i mean really those were the two i and also i'd also say just general density there's a little bit of concern of you know why do we need duplexes here and the reality is we need housing i mean you know and that neighborhood two zoning is what this is in the comp plan and we feel that this is a good this is an apartment community we're not this isn't an extremely dense use you know we are aligned to the seven units an acre which is under the max of neighborhood two And we feel that with the open space, the connectivity, and that public road coming through, it feels much more like a suburban development than it does a apartment community or something of an extreme density, which I feel is the concern. To that end, one of the neighbors that showed up had concerns that her son can't afford to buy a home. yes, you know, there's concerns over density and I mean price, you know, supply and demand. So I mean price definitely is impacted by how many homes we can put on the market. Obviously we want those to be quality and well thought out. Uh, but those were the key issues that came up with and then the traffic of course, which I mentioned.

And you mentioned this, but I don't think I understood it completely. You're missing one access point. You currently it's like an easement or a right away, but you don't own it.

Yes. Let me, Excuse me, Mr. Mayor, Council Member Allgood. Let me go back to that. So this upper left image here, right in the middle of that, that kind of gray area, right, that is Hill Lane. So currently, it's hard to see in this, but there's a little sliver there. We do own that sliver, and that is what we are putting, that's right-of-way that we're dedicating to the city And then there's another sliver that we don't own.

Is there a need to acquire that? Or is there a plan to acquire that? Or is it just not important?

Mr. Mayor, Councilmember Allgood, currently the city owns it. I would ask Katie, I don't know if you have any recollection of our many meetings on this from city engineering. on who owns that and if that would even be a possibility but my understanding uh council member allgood is that the city owns that land it's not for sale we haven't they're trying to figure out what what could we do with it and that's been the discussion so the pedestrian pathway connection when the isabel development came in seemed to make the most sense given that the house on the south will have access off of owyhee councilman allgood council members

As the applicant explained, this is a unique situation in that it is a little bit confusing. So feel free to interrupt me if you have any questions as I kind of talk through it. As the applicant mentioned, there is that little sliver. So if you look in his aerial image there, you can see that there's a little sliver that the applicant owns that's on the east side of the property. just adjacent to that little sliver, there is another little sliver that appears in the map as right of way. This was never actually dedicated as right of way. It's this nebulous. Nobody owns this portion of property. We went through records with we went through our city records and we found no formal dedication of right of way ever occurred. It's just this open street strip of property that either somebody misplotted or they forgot to follow through with the dedication process long, long time ago. But there's this it's a small portion of property that nobody owns. I think it's about 15 feet. So the concern was that we don't know who can formally dedicate this strip to the city to make it into right of way. because there's no ownership of it and there hasn't been any ownership of it for gosh, 30, 40, 50 years. Um, so when the adjacent parcel came forward saying that they were thinking to develop, it kind of changed engineering's frame of mind of how we should provide our recommendation for how the applicant should move forward. And the applicant has been really great to work with because this has been a, something that we don't typically run into. So the applicant's been really good to work with. And so that's why we weren't having them develop Hill Lane as a road to connect into, but rather just working with the adjacent property so that we don't limit access, because that was the big concern was we didn't want to limit anybody's access. So when the adjacent property was saying that they were now going to develop we could work through with this current applicant a little bit more clearly on how access could be maintained without right of way to this parcel.

There's no utilities in it.

There's no utility. Well, let me double check my web map. I haven't looked at this one in a little bit. There's a water line in that piece of property that is not owned by anybody. but it is a, it's a one inch water line that serves these neighboring homes. Um, it's right on the property line of the property that nobody owns and the adjacent, oh yes, you have it pulled up. If I just looked up for my own computer. So yes, there is a water line in there. So we will work with the adjacent applicant to get the necessary easements for that water line.

Okay. I just, and the only, the only thing I'm going is I just don't want a bare piece of nothing there in the middle of all this. You know what I'm saying? If we, if we can build on it or pave it or whatever, but I don't want a piece of ground. That's just weeds that nobody's.

Mayor and counselor all good. Um, yes. Uh, it, it has been an interesting journey to get here. Um, but where that other, so, The sliver that he's showing that the applicant or the property owner does own currently that has been conditioned or staff is recommending that condition be that that be considered an access easement until a point in the future where the property to the east develops which at that point in time we would require that they do construct that pathway and landscape their sliver Now, the other side of it would be a condition on the other property. However, we're able to move forward with that if it be a vacation or what have you with an easement over that utility.

But it will be used. It won't be just.

Mayor and Councilor Allgood, this has been staff's concern as well. So we've really tried to figure out how to. utilize Both applications without making either one rely on the other So they both do at this point in time how we've conditioned this property or this project We believe it would solve that that concern.

Okay, I Apologize for bringing up something so complicated, but that's just fair question.

Thank you. Counselor all good counselor register. I

Thank you. So is somebody going to maintain that then?

Mayor and Councilor Register, it would be under the HOA. The sliver that's on their property or that's owned by them, that would have to be maintained by their HOA.

Okay. A couple of questions. I don't want to spend a lot of time. I know everybody's tired and Wants to go home. There's no development agreement on this already, right? So we're not modifying any kind of development agreement. It's just okay and then These are meant to be sold Not rentals, right?

Mr. Mayor councilmember registered. Yes.

Okay, and then you said interesting that it's not Deed restricted to veterans, but that's who you're marketing to is that what I heard?

Correct.

Okay but if they're not veterans, they can still come live there.

That's correct.

Okay. All right. And then, um, I think for staff, my only question code says that on single family homes, it's eight homes per acre, right?

Mayor and council register. Yeah. The density for this is two to eight dwelling units per acre.

But code says eight, like if it was single family, they could put eight units per acre, right?

Mayor and Councillor, that is correct. It wouldn't change necessarily depending on the product type.

I was just doing some math for myself and the public that whether it's eight units per acre on single family homes or this design of duplexes, it's the same amount of homes. It's just you're getting more open space with this design, if that makes sense. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Register. Anything else?

Council? All right.

Thank you.

Staff? Thank you.

Just so everyone's aware, the police department's in the back. They have an item on the agenda tonight, so thank you for being here.

Thank you, Mayor and Council, Katie Wright, Senior Planner, 205 South 6th Avenue. The applicant, Andrew Wheeler, on behalf of the property owner, Tim Davis, submitted applications for a rezone of parcels R02660011, R0266001, and R02660010A, and adjacent right-of-way from R1 to R2. and for a preliminary plot for 11 duplexes and one single-family detached lot with a total of 12 buildable lots and 23 dwelling units. The site is 3.29 acres and is located south of Syringa Lane, approximately 1,300 feet west of Florida. The subject parcel is vacant land surrounded by single-family residential to the northeast and west, with the interstate along the southern boundary. This is also near the Canyon Crossing duplex development and storage units. Across the interstate is multifamily development. There is an active application for Isbell Townhomes to the east, which is the project we were referring to. The subject site was annexed into the city of Caldwell in 1960 as part of the Hillcrest subdivision from 1917. In 2025, a lot line adjustment, LLA 2503, was approved for the lot where the existing single-family house is located north of the subject property fronting along Syringa. This was to keep the existing single-family home and not include it as part of this development. The parcel is under 10 acres and is located in a largely developed area in which municipal services are already available and therefore is classified as in full development. The applicant's proposing 11 duplexes in one single-family detached lot, which conforms with the purpose statement as specified within the Caldwell City Code for R2 Community Residential Zone, which conforms with the purpose statement as specified within the Caldwell City Code for R2 Community Residential Zone, which states the R2 zone accommodates single-family and duplexes. The proposed density of 6.99 dwelling units per acre is within the allowable two to eight dwelling units per acre, therefore it complies with code. The subject parcel is located in the neighborhood two place type within the comprehensive plan. The neighborhood two place type is the primary residential place type in Caldwell. This encompasses residential areas that provide an array of low and mid-dense housing options. These neighborhoods are located outside of most commercial centers, but should still be well connected to nearby services. The requested R2 zone is a compatible zoning district within the neighborhood two place type. The preliminary plat request is for 12 buildable lots, 11 duplex lots, and one single-family detached lot, totaling 23 units. The project is also proposing four common lots with 8.46% open space, which exceeds the code minimum of 8%. The development will take access off of Syringa Lane via the connection of Owyhee Street. Parcel R0266001, which has been used as Hill Lane, will remain undeveloped while the property to the east requires it for access. If the property to the east does develop the applicant shall show pedestrian or a future pedestrian connectivity which staff has conditioned to meet code for width and landscaping. At this time the applicant would also be required to install bullards along Hill Lane where that would end on the north of this property as it will not be able to connect south to Owyhee Street. Due to the size and scope of the development a traffic impact study was not required. As conditioned, the project is compliant with all required codes. All utilities are available or will be made available to serve the proposed single family and duplex development. Political subdivisions, including school districts, were notified and provided opportunity to comment. No agencies sent in comments of concern. Public agencies were sent to all property owners within 500 foot radius of the property and staff received three public comments. An email received from Madison Freets on March 16th, 2026 in opposition due to impact on the neighborhood character, loss of privacy, traffic, and safety concerns, and the need for transition from the existing surrounding uses. An email received from Braden Arman on April 1st, 2026 in opposition due to the lack of compatibility with the existing neighborhood and that this site should remain R1. And an email received from Sharon and Orville Willis on May 4th, 2026 in opposition due to traffic and decreased water pressure. On May 26, the hearing examiner recommended approval of the requested applications. Staff's initial review found that the proposed project is in conformance with all applicable city codes as amended, all application approval criteria per city in Idaho code, the adopted comp plan and future land use map, and all other applicable city adopted master plans. The city council has the authority to approve or deny the applications based on the approval criteria within Caldwell City Code once they've reviewed the record and evidence and heard all public testimony. Thank you. I stand for questions.

Thank you. Councilor Register.

Real quick, can you go back to the map that you had where it shows what the other land use is around there? Yeah. So one of the complaints from the residents was that it didn't fit the area. The townhomes have not been approved yet, but that's what they want to put there, is that correct?

Mayor and council register, that is correct. They'll be heard at a future city council date.

And then there is a duplex development at Cannon Crossing that has been approved.

Mayor and councilor, that is correct.

And then we have, looks like south of there, well, I can see the self-storage, but between, it looks like Blackfoot and Owyhee, what is that? Are those apartments?

Mayor and Councillor, I believe that that's part of Canyon Crossing.

Oh, okay, so they're duplexes then? I believe so. Okay, so that's kind of the theme, is duplexes in town homes there? Okay, thank you. Yeah.

Councillor Tillman. Thank you, Council President Register.

Okay, two quick questions. Just to clarify, the 15-foot easement, or the 15-foot easement Unowned land uphill Lane. Yeah the applicant was showing it as Landscaped almost sidewalk that was moving up. This is stating that it will be done in the future only if Isabella needs access Correct.

So mayor and councillor Tillmont The unowned land is actually further east of what they're showing to be the pathway potentially Again, the condition will read stating that this shall remain to be public or a cross-access easement to allow access to the properties to the east, because if that does get developed as a pathway today, they won't be able to access that lot. So hypothetically, if the property that has submitted for an application over to the east If that were to be denied in the future without that access along Hill they would have no access. So that that's where that condition is coming from. Essentially that shall remain as an easement that will become null and void if any future development to the east is approved.

Okay. My question is where I was. So eventually that 15 foot which carries all the way up to Syringa it looks like that

That is the unowned land that would not be part of this development whatsoever.

Right. I guess what I'm trying to say is that eventually are we considering that to be reconditioned down the road as it develops out there to become a road? Is that why we're, I mean, or is it only ever going to be a pedestrian path?

Councilman Tillmott and council members, looking at our future roadway master plans we're not anticipating for hill lane to be a city incorporated roadway and so that's why we are looking at doing this shared pathway rather than requiring them to do a 35-foot dedication of road of half street improvement so the plan is that hill lane if this whole area were to improve and i know there's a lot of residents i'm sure there's a lot of residences here tonight that own Homes there who are would say that their homes never going to get improved. But if you look, you know, 20, 25, 30 years down the future, we're intending that hill lane will not be a full road through. It'll just maintain as this County road as residences live there and then no future growth will occur on it.

Right. That's what I was asking you. So eventually it's just going to be maintained as a pedestrian pathway pretty much. Correct. Okay. One last question based on one of the opposition letters. Where are we with water pressure up there?

In this area, water pressure is not a concern. Of course, our water department and our water consultants continue to monitor pressure throughout the entire city, but in this location, pressure is not a concern.

Okay, and this development won't affect that?

Correct.

Just to confirm, it'll affect it, but minimally?

Mayor, thank you. Of course, anytime you connect a single resident onto a water line, you could say that it would affect it. So I'm not expecting there to be impact to any existing residences.

Thank you, Council President. Thank you, Councilor Tillmott. Councilor Register.

Well, I just want to confirm that there's no more doors with this layout than there is if they were single-family homes. honoring the density.

Mayor and councilor register. Hypothetically that is correct. Lot sizes do have an impact on what that would look like. So these lots are a little they they vary in size but some of them are around 9000 for a single for one duplex or two units. If they were to change all of this to single-family if it was detached they would all need to meet About I believe 4,000 so hypothetically they could probably fit that in they could also Hypothetically do attached products and have lot sizes of 2,000 square feet and that would meet code so And we're talking about three acres.