City Council - Special Meeting

9.04 a.m. over here for a city council's special meeting workshop.

We have two things on the agenda today. So real quick, we're going to take a roll call for the city council.

Madam Clerk. All right. Yeah. All right.

Here. Here. Williams? All good?

Here. Denver? Here. All right. We have five council members. We'll go ahead and get started. Real quick, we just need to clarify. Do you need to take any sort of action as far as you have a quorum?

Mayor, we do have a quorum. And so if our chairman can just call our meeting to order, I'll do a silent roll call and we'll be fine.

Title IV.

Thank you and thank you commissioners for being here and your team. We appreciate it. Thank you. Call the fire department and all those that have been invited to this conversation. We are at a very monumental time in front of us. Um, I believe we're 1 of the last cities, not. The last city in the area with our own that truth chief Boise Meridian, Boise Meridian in the area. So we're kind of trending towards going to our rural fire district. So one, we appreciate our partners that surround us and looking at a potential change in the way we are providing services. And with that, the first action item today is going to be to consider resolution 172-26. extending the June 26th of 2026 local disaster emergency declaration where we had a major weather event. The county, myself, declared an emergency declaration. So with that, we're still evaluating a lot of the destruction and damage that happened and mitigating that. So we'd like to extend that. And fire chief, can you just speak briefly on your request?

in line with the canyon county's emergency declaration which they've continued until the city has completed its complete assessment of damages or gets an idea of continuing mitigation efforts it's my recommendation that we continue the declaration as well not to end it before the county ends theirs without good justification. There may be some unknowns still that pop up. We've had a member a number of partners and infrastructure affected that I'm sure Haley Hart could could speak to but I think I think canceling it at this point would be, well, it's not necessary to cancel it. It's a good idea just to extend it another seven to 30 days.

And just so council's aware, we have been working with the Kennedy County Emergency Operations Manager, and we've been getting numbers. We've worked with our community partners like Colville School District, College of Idaho, and others that have suffered significant damage, and they're still assessing that and getting that information. to Christine, but with that, thank you, Chief, and I would ask for a motion.

Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Denver. I make a motion that we approve resolution number 172-20, pending the June 26, 2020.

Thank you, Councilor Dittmer, for that motion. Is there a second? Second. Motion to second. Madam Clerk? Aye. All right. The motion passes. Thank you. Moving on to discussion item number two, the transition of Colwell Fire Department to the Colwell Rural

Thank you, Mayor, Council, Commissioners, Chiefs, guests. As you said, Mayor, this is a monumental discussion that we're going to have today, and that's really what it's meant for. We've got a couple of presentations from some special guests. Chief Greg Dominski is here, who we consider the author of 959, kind of a cure to House Bill 389. of the technical experts in the room who has navigated the process himself and is currently undergoing consolidation between Middleton and Starfire districts. Later on, we'll be joined by Chief Kirk Carpenter of the Nampa Fire District. He'll be here around 11. He had a board meeting. The agenda that we have is very loose, and it's meant to foster some good communication and some dialogue. Justin in the back he may be called upon because he is Just full of knowledge and has done a tremendous amount of research on behalf of the city and the fire department to Kind of tell us the ins and outs of legal limitations and state statutes and what this discussion is is all about today Our goal is the fire department is to bring forward the idea that we can become a fire district and With with the notion that we don't have a reduction in services, we don't harm our community and we don't harm our personnel. That's the idea how we get there is going to going to take a lot. Initially, we started a discussion that we would have a timeline to take us to January of 2028 to build what would become or an annex fire district with the cultural rule district in the city of Caldwell. Following those discussions, that timeline was somewhat accelerated and the request was made. Can we do that this fiscal year? Very tight timeline. given the constraints of what it takes for public notice, workshops, et cetera. And to make sure that we have the right budgeting authority and we line everything up with state as far as tax collection, et cetera. So as you all know, our current fire service funding model is primarily from property taxes. We do get revenues from other sources, franchise fees, and grants. but we would shift to 100% or nearly 100% property tax-based funding mechanism if we were to form a fire district or be annexed by the Caldwell Rural Fire District. The service demand for our agency has not slowed down. We anticipate 10,000 calls next year, four stations. We're on target for 9,200. And as we have all said before, our crews are amongst the busiest in the treasure Valley. Our staffing needs right now, based on the study show that we're 24 personnel under. The benchmark where we need to be that's today when station 4 opens will still be 12 personnel behind, which is equivalent to another station. Speaking of another station, we are already assessing plans for station five. And I bring this up because there is a need for continued funding. With our current budget deficit based on revenues collected by the fire department, we are behind. There's some mechanisms out there that can help us catch up. but we rely heavily on the rural district to augment the fire department's budget to the tune of about $3 million per year, $1 million in staffing, which goes, it's basically a pass-through to pay for personnel, $2 million to be their fire department. Without their support, it would be detrimental to our organization. We have a number of long-term capital requests, including facilities, apparatus, a new ladder truck, plus replacement of those things called fire engines that run about $1.2 million to $1.5 million each. And we're limited based on some of the constraints of 389 and growth, not exactly paying for growth. You'll hear some comments today from Chief Dominski about 959 and how the effects of 389 are going to be enhanced, cured. Just a moment, please. And some guidelines about House Bill 765, about what the city must do if we do choose to transition to a fire district. I'll be the first up here to say, We may get done with this presentation in 30 minutes. For this workshop in 30 minutes, it may take us all day. There's going to be a lot of information coming back and forth. And our idea is to facilitate that conversation and to make sure everyone leaves here with a good understanding of what it takes to do this. If at the end of today we decide that this isn't right for the citizens or the fire department or the rural district, we're good with that. but we wanna make sure that we don't rush into this because if we miss a step, if we rush something, we miss a detail, it could set us up for failure. And we really wanna make sure that that doesn't happen because our citizens would ultimately suffer from that. Before I turn it over to Chief Dominski, I think it's appropriate to do some introductions. Does anybody? Is that okay? Does everybody know everybody? Let's just do intros real quick. Okay.

Mike Denver, Caldwell City Council.

Chris Allgood, Caldwell City Council. Eric Phillips, Mayor.

Dana Register.

Chuck Stoddard, Caldwell City Council. Scott Tillmott, City Council.

Rochelle Castleberry, Interim Finance Director.

Morning. I'm Oscar Klass. I'm the Caldwell City Attorney. I agree. I'm Chief of Middleton Star Fire District.

Bill Bongiorno with the Fire Prevention Office.

Lisa Richard, Deputy Fire Marshal.

Cory Gerard, Deputy Chief of Administration, Caldwell Fire. Brian Daniels, Fire Chief.

That's you, Deputy Chief of Operations, Caldwell Fire. Brian, you're Chief.

Colby, GERBS, Local Tension and City President.

Thanks, Vice President.

Marina Herb, Fire Admin.

Mark Wendelsworth, Caldwell Rural Fire District.

Steve John, Commissioner, Caldwell Rural Fire District.

Recognize. Chief Stoll, Kenney County Paramedics is here. Thank you for coming, Chief. Tom McIntosh, Training Captain, Katie Hart. Chaplain Phil, thank you for being here, sir. And Rich Tyler, Core Construction. Thank you for being here. Oh, Justin.

Chief.

Rex Ingram had to clear the scene for you guys to come in.

We have some additional guests in the crowd, if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself.

I'm Len Rimby. I'm a Mampet City resident. And chairman of the five-seat committee. Yes, I am.

Important.

Thank you for being here. Some quick housekeeping items. If we do continue into the lunch hour, we will be having lunch delivered. Lorena will send out or pass out an order for those that are interested. With that mayor, do you have any anything else before we turn it over to chief?

No, I just want to thank everyone for being here. This is a very tight timeframe. In fact, I believe July 24th is. 1 of our 1st, big notes, and I would say if it's even before that. Finance and the things that we have to figure out so we call this meeting today, and I appreciate everyone showing up. Clearing your schedules, because we are on a time crunch. There's additional timeframes after that, which we'll talk about, but. You know, if we need additional meetings between now and our finance directors kind of deadlines on what we're going to do, whether it's. I'm going to make the switch or it's going to be a future year. I just think each and every 1 of you for taking the time in here today together. And hopefully we can get some stuff figured out and we'll take a break. I believe at the top of the hour every hour. That's a little bit feel free to step out. The bathrooms are just down around the corner. Most people in here should know where they're at and. I believe that's it for the all the things that we were about to talk about.

We're going to talk about a lot of things. Chief.

Mayor, council, and everybody in the room was asked to talk about a few topics, overview of fire protection districts in Idaho. There's 161 fire districts in Idaho, and there's 61 fire departments in Idaho. The Treasure Valley, there's just three fire departments, which is Caldwell, Meridian, and Boise. Everybody else is a fire district. Nampa was the one that changed from a fire department to . A fire district works different than a city department. It is governed by a board of either three or five elected commissioners. that solely look at fire protection and within the district. Obviously, you folks know that with City Fire Department, you have all the other city functions that you have to compete with. And when you're a fire district, you just do that solely to the district. The citizens are the same citizens. The protection district will be larger than what the city fire department is today. You'll take the rural fire district and make a new map that encompasses the city of Caldwell along with what the rural district currently has. And that is the same across the state of Idaho with all fire protection districts. Most of them cover some sort of a city and some cover more than one city. in one of the fire districts that I have, Star, and we have three cities and two counties, or now four cities and two counties that we protect. We protect all of the city of Star, a portion of Eagle, a portion of Middleton, and getting ready to have a portion of Nampa, and then we're in Canyon It encompasses a lot and a lot of fire districts do that today. And then we'll talk about House Bill 959. 959 is a very, very small fix to what everybody has been talking about for five years of House Bill 389 that has limited the amount of funding that every taxing authority in Idaho gets. It was capped at 8%. It went to a preliminary levy rate. It brought annexations in at a different level and several other things. It was 28 pages long. It touched a lot of Idaho code. What we did with House Bill 959, it started out, I think it was House Bill 642 that failed miserably on the floor. That also encompassed cities and counties and fire districts. It really took the cap of 8% off of everybody and got rid of the preliminary levy rate and went back to the way that we used to do it, which was previous year's levy rate. So when that bill went through the first time and failed miserably, the Association of Idaho Cities was very opposed to it. because of what they call a couple of items that were in it that they did not agree with. And one of them was foregone and one of them was a citizen's initiative for budget decrease. So going through that process, I only spoke for fire and ambulance districts. As part of the Idaho Fire Chiefs, my role there is legislative. And so I had to bring into these leadership meetings that I was having with the House and the Senate, talking about fixing this little tiny piece of House Bill 389. And so I finally was able to bring in somebody from mayor from city to come in and talk about the function of the city and how this would impact them. But we did learn in there those two poison pills that scared everybody off. One was the Citizens Initiative one that is already in code. They showed us in code that that can be done. because it says, I believe, that any ordinance that a city makes can be challenged by this process that they have at 50 plus one vote. I suggested to leadership when we were writing these bills was that if I have to go to the citizens and ask for a levy increase and pass it at 66.7%, then to reduce our budget, it should be the same. They agreed with that, so they put that in that bill. The other portion of it was originally they wanted to do away with all foregone amounts. So anybody that had foregone lost it. I said that I believe that that wasn't fair. It didn't matter if you're a fire district, an ambulance district or a city or a county. There was a reason that the council or choice to have foregone amount. And so I believe that they should just leave it in place. And then from this day forward, not collect it or not add to it. And my reasoning for that for fire districts and ambulance districts were we needed all of our 3% and all of our new construction just to stay in business. And I don't know what all fire departments and cities and counties and so on and so forth have lost in revenue from House Bill 389, but I can tell you that the Star Fire Protection District, because of its massive amounts of growth, has lost $3.2 million to date from a budget authority since House Bill 389 went into effect. So what it did when it failed miserably on the floor met with leadership again about trying another run and we came to the conclusion that we're going to have to just do it for fire districts and ambulance districts because cities and counties were against it. I understand that they have their reasonings but fire and ambulance districts were in a position that if we don't do something we won't be in business anymore. So what we got done during that process was the preliminary levy rate went away. So now you go back to the old way of using previous year's levy rate. And then we got the cap raised to 15%. There is very few fire districts and ambulance districts that hit the 8% cap originally. Star happens to be one of them and there is a few others throughout the state that actually went over the 8% cap and what that does is reduce property taxes for the rest of the folks within the district. For instance, the Star Fire Protection District, most people, if they had lived there since 2020, seen a 50% reduction in property taxes since that 50% makes that $3.2 million of budget authority that we've lost. So that is what 389 did. It was three months of negotiating with leadership and the House and the Senate to get to this point. And it is a very small piece of what everything that House Bill 389 in 2021 actually touched. The next topic is growth, paying for growth. With this model of 389, growth does not pay for growth anymore, which you guys are very well aware of. It doesn't matter if you're a fire district, an ambulance district, or a city, or a county, or any other special district in Idaho. It does not pay for itself anymore. You can't keep up with, well, who knows, you can't keep up with anything anymore. and the cost of once you have if you do have a police department you do have a fire department just trying to keep up with the cost of inflation and i hate to complain about inflation because it is hitting everybody but at the end of the day when you put emergency services and police or fire on the end of inflation it goes up tremendously I'm sure Chief Daniels has told you in 2020 when I bought two engines that were $600,000, if I order those same two engines today, it'll take me up to four years to get them. I have to pay for them up front, and it's $1.2 million if I change nothing. Got air pack. It used to cost us around $6,000. Yesterday I got a quote for Scott Air Packs. They're now $14,099. That is the cost when you put emergency services on the end of inflation. It is out of control for us and we cannot keep up. The only choices that we have as a fire protection district, because we're 98% reliant on property tax, is a levy increase. And originally, when House Bill 389 was introduced, I told the author of this that this was going to happen. There is no way that we're going to be able to continue to grow our fire district with this funding mechanism. And his point was that everybody loves the fire department. Just ask for a levy increase. We ran five. The levy increases over the last two and a half years, they passed the last one in November as a temporary. The first four were permanent, and it takes 66 and two-thirds to be able to pass a permanent levy increase, and we're only able to ever get to 59%. It takes 50 plus one to pass a temporary in Idaho, which lasts two years, and we're able to causes a lot of other issues for hiring people at different levels in the fire department. So it is a challenge, but it is the only way we have. State statute says what we can charge for other things. It's very limited to what we can charge in the fire prevention division. It's very limited in what we can charge for fees for anything else. So it makes it hard. that 2% of the 98% of property tax, the 2% is all we can get over and above the property taxes that we collect. The other pieces of growth, paying for growth, is the impact fees. We do have impact fees. We did change a law this year that fire districts and ambulance districts do not have to have an intergovernmental agreement with the city and the county to collect them. That was something that I authored to help out with So every five years, no different than you folks have to do for your MPs, is you have to go through the new capital improvement plan, go through a third-party study to establish an impact fee. And we have done that, but now with some of our six partners in STAR, some of them now are three years from implementing the new fee. So by the time they get implemented, we'll be going back to do a new study again. And so we're just missing out on all of that revenue that we would collect in impact fees. another part of growth uh growth paying for growth i do believe it is my opinion that the builders and developers are paying their fair share in my districts they are paying for the fire station they are paying for the new apparatus to go in it but it's up to all the citizens that live in your department or in my fire district or anybody else's to pay for the ongoing expense of people and that's the piece that we cannot fund anymore of a levy increase. The 15% annual budget authority, like I mentioned before, there's a lot of taxing entities in general that have never hit the 8%. So the 15% A cap only helps very few organizations to collect more money. But there was a point in time where STAR was growing at over 20%. So the difference between the 8 and the 20% was the property tax reduction of the 50% property taxes of the folks in that district. I don't believe. I don't know the exact number of the growth of Caldwell, but it looks like it's growing tremendously. But it's probably only in the 2% to 3% range someplace. I'm sure that you would know that better than I would. That 15% within the entire newly formed, if that's what you choose to do, fire district, which would encompass the city of Saar, probably would never hit the 15% mark unless it really grew a lot faster than it is today. Next item is taxpayer protections. The protection is when we authored House Bill 765. That gave the mechanism put in place to consolidation of municipal fire departments with fire districts. So before this bill was passed last legislative session, we were unable to do that. But what it takes to do it, and I'll just be honest, there is a flaw in this bill. And so I got stuck working with leadership on House Bill 959 to fix that small portion of House Bill 389. And I had other people working on House Bill 765, which allows fire departments and fire districts to merge together. And I tell you that the The reason that it was favorable by the House and the Senate was because there was no tax increase at all to the citizens. So I don't know the exact numbers of the budget of either of the City of Caldwell or the Caldwell Rural Fire District, but the intent was that you take the M&O budget from the current fire department and then you take the budget that the Rural Fire District have and you put them together and then all of the everybody that pays the taxes in there it comes up with a new levy rate that was the way it was supposed to be written what was written is goes back to the fire district law of annexation so unfortunately if you were to follow this process today you would lose 10 percent of of the 15 million dollars that was that would theoretically be transferred from the um the city to the rural fire district which i mean that would be in the three million dollar range which would not work so it would take a legislative change which i have talked to leadership about but obviously we cannot do anything until the next legislative session that we can get this done. There is no guarantee ever to get it done. It's just a long process to go through when they're back in session. So the taxpayer protection is that. The taxpayer protection is if simple dollars, if they were paying on their tax bill $300 to the city of Caldwell and $100 of that was for the fire department, and now they would pay $200 to the city of Caldwell, and then they would pay an extra $100 to the rural fire district. So not a tax increase of any kind. protection that was in it and then obviously the so-called poison pill that was put in as some people would call it in 959 that the citizens can do an initiative to reduce the budget of a fire district that was never something that can be done before it can only be done in cities for an ordinance. I think cities are the only ones that pass their budget with an ordinance. Everybody else does it by resolution. And so there was a 1993 Supreme Court case in Idaho that said that you cannot reduce a budget that was passed by resolution for a county. And so they believe that that would that would move on to other districts. But at the end of the day. Talking about precautions or protections for the taxpayer. I can speak for my budget. Anybody is can come into my office, talk to my finance people anytime they want and if they can show where we have. Wasted funds. then I'd like to see it because we are just barely scraping by is how we're looking at it today. So I think that the taxpayer is completely protected in this process.

Chief, since you mentioned the 959 issue and the city by ordinance, I think that was misrepresented to you by leadership. And so right now, cities are not required to have that process of having their budgets potentially cut through the initiative process. That is something that the courts have struck down. And you mentioned the Bonner County case. And the Idaho Supreme Court said city and county budgets through the initiative process. And so I think that may have been misrepresented to you by leadership when they said that, if that was what they said. So that was why the cities and counties strongly opposed that legislation because it's now putting that into policy for the first time and any further amendments to 389 in the future would then have to have those aspects in them, including the budget reduction

Thank you. Thank you. Justin's our legislative guru, so.

I believe him over. I believe it at that. Funding options beyond House Bill 959, including levy increases and bonding authority, I already talked about, take 66 and 2 thirds to pass anything that's permanent. Anything that is temporary is 50 plus 1. Except for cities, and I believe that cities if. Able to speak more on it. And if you watched. Did a public safety levy increase, I believe. 2 years ago, or 2 years ago. And they only had to pass that with a 60%.

and i believe it has something to do with how much they ask for if it doesn't go over a certain percentage threshold you can you can potentially pass that with the 60 that is correct that was one of the provisions that was implemented in the original 30 cap law when it was passed in the 1990s was that cities that had very low levy rates that they then defined as point permanent override election at the 60% voter approval threshold rather than the two-thirds, which everybody else would have to comply with. But because of the huge increase in property values, now that .004 threshold is much more universal among cities. And so that's broadly available to many more cities than it was in the past. But it is only cities, correct? That is correct.

It is only cities. So with that, if you have any questions, I'm happy to try to answer them. Council.

Chief, so outside of our Colwell City's budget process that we're trying to get through, is there any impetus to get this thing done quickly? Or are we going to have the same rules next year and the year beyond? I'm just wondering, you know as the mayor spoke of we're kind of in an accelerated process But the accelerated process to my understanding is for our budget. Is there any other reason why we would need to accelerate this process?

I think Again, this is my personal opinion is that this process shouldn't be rushed regardless when Even if you're not having a budget crunch transitioning a fire department to a fire district, or even transitioning in a consolidation of a fire department in a fire district, or a fire district in a fire district, or as far as that goes, a department in a department, takes time. It is not something that I think, I mean, I did it with Middleton and Starr over the last eight years. And yeah, I went a lot longer than I needed to go. for basically for political reasons. They're two different communities with two different political views in some certain aspects. And so rushing that process, I didn't believe would have been the right thing to do when in the middle of trying to pass a levy increase. So I waited until that happened. those levy increases had both passed in both districts and that now we're going to start talking about actually consolidating the districts together it is a lot of steps to it chief carpenter will he gets here we'll be able to talk about the process that he's working on right now with the district in a district merging together then there's a lot of nuances so that the The piece that they have put together is like an eight or nine step process and they're in step two or three of their process right now, which the beginning is the easiest piece. The beginning of transferring or putting two organizations together, the conversations, the public input, those pieces are easy when you're actually doing the work of merging them together after everybody decides it's the right thing to do and it's voted upon. it's moving forward that's when the little tiny pieces come in and those little tiny pieces are the parts that are the toughest probably took us two years to get all those little things worked out to where we so middleton and star i'll back up a little bit middleton and star operate as one fire department through a joint powers agreement We have two separate boards and two separate budgets. So they independently make decisions and then I report to all of them. We have taken from our battalion chief level all the way up to my position is shared cost. So what that does in both of those small districts is it saves the citizens about $600,000 a year in overhead costs. by sharing all of those positions. So getting all of that lined up to where you have all the same processes and same policies and procedures, contracts, so on and so forth, all lined up, that's the piece that takes the longest. These great conversations like we're having today is the easy part. The rest of it takes longer. So I guess to answer your question, I understand that it's a budget issue. I understand that you're having a budget issue just like the rest of the state of Idaho is. But rushing this process, again, in my opinion, is not a smart thing to do because something will fall apart. And at the end of the day, the citizens suffer from that.

How long did it take NAPDA to put it through? It seemed like it was a shorter time period. Am I correct in that or not? I went to several of those meetings over at NAPA.

You mean when they became a district?

Yeah.

So again, Kirk, when he gets here, he'll be able to speak more on it. But they had started that process before House Bill 389 was a thing and before it came in front of the legislature and passed. So they worked on that for a couple of years and then got the annexation piece done. Then House Bill 389 shows up. So I can tell you more about the details of this, but he spent literally hours upon hours during the legislative session begging to be exempt from the first year of House Bill 389 due to the fact that if it went through and they were not exempt, Nampa would have one staffed fire station today. They lost everything that was in that annexation. They would have been down to having . So they were exempted from that for the first year. That process took them somewheres around two years, hoping for those numbers, through the process of becoming a fire district. that a fire district is the way to go? Absolutely think it's the way to go. Do I think that Caldwell Fire Department should become a fire district? I absolutely think that it should. Point is, it's gotta be done to where you can have the proper funding to do it. and it's gotta be successful. Because again, the only people that suffer from it besides the employees of the fire department are the citizens. Because if you got already, chief said you're already 24 people behind, if you have to lay people off because there's not proper funding mechanism, that only hurts the citizen.

Mr. Mayor. Chief, thank you for providing your expertise in this matter. It's very insightful. Talk about the little logistic pieces that need to come together to make this successful. Do you anticipate or do you think that the logistics that the Caldwell Fire Department and the Caldwell Rural Fire District would go through are any different than the logistics that, let's say, the Napa Rural and the Napa Fire District would do? Are they similar? Can you can see what might be more complicated or less complicated for the city?

I think it'll be similar to what Napa went through because I don't other than a couple of staff folks. The rural district doesn't have any. It doesn't have its own union contract. So that's kind of the same thing that Nampa went through with my situation is I had two labor agreements that we had to merge together. That was a big piece of making ours into one was putting that stuff together. So I think that this process would be very similar to what Nampa went through. But what we have to change in House Bill 765 is the annexation. The word annexation, it's not that simple, but the annexation needs to be changed to consolidation.

Chief, you stated there was a poison pill in one of those about currently still about moving money. Would it be beneficial for us to maybe wait and see if we wait and see is always a bad thing sometimes. I do know that the state house, there's no guarantee on that. But in your opinion, working with them, do you think it would be in our best interest to maybe wait a year and see if we can get rid of that? So that.

I think that the smartest thing to do would be to wait to see if we can get House Bill 765, that law that is in effect today. one get that fixed so it's a consolidation and not an annexation because when you use the word annexation it goes back to that 90 and you lose the approximately three million dollars that you would lose fixing that the poison pill part that the cities and counties this gentleman alluded to that they did not like i highly doubt you'll ever get that removed legislature would love, and I'm not speaking for this one, but at the end of the day, most of the legislature, the leadership, does not want anything to do with foregone amounts. They want to get rid of it. That was one of the poison pills. The other piece was a citizen's initiative to reduce a budget. Obviously, what they told me was wrong. I totally believe the staff here on that document. But at the end of the day, it wasn't something that, and I didn't make this decision on my own. I worked with Chief Carpenter. He's the president of the Idaho Fire Chiefs Association. We talked about this extensively if we were going to report that piece of it and chose to because we put parameters in there that made it to our, If we really were, if they can go through this process and pass it at 66 and two thirds, then we probably are doing something that we shouldn't. Needs to be.

Information. Thank you, chief. I think it's worth noting. Chief was a Coldwell firefighter for about 20 years, and he's invested in our city. He wants the best for the fire service overall. But really quick for the for the good of the order chief. Some of the funding mechanisms that we're looking at, or some of the ideas for sustainability involve annexation by the rule district. forming a brand new district or pursuing levies, be it temporary or permanent. Can you explain how a permanent levy would work and the pursuit of a fire district afterwards?

I mean, a permanent levy increase would, I mean, you could do that even the way that House Bill 765 is written today if there was a guarantee that you could get a permanent levy increase. I mentioned that we tried this in Middleton and Starr, a permanent levy increase four times and couldn't get over 59%. It is the feeling of a lot of citizens, a lot of voters, that builders and developers just need to pay for everything. I talked to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, and it didn't matter if they lived there for three days or if they lived there for three years. They want the gates closed. They don't want anybody else to come in. which is frustrating conversation to have with people that have only lived here for a very short time. Most of the folks that live in our communities that have been here in the last five years are part of the problem. That's okay. I mean, nothing. people moving here at all, but they have to participate in the public safety aspect of it. They have to participate in paying property taxes because that is the only way that we are funded. A temporary levy increase, it only lasts for two years and you have to go back to the voters to get it extended. It's a hard sell to do a permanent levy. I have watched Meridian do theirs at the 60%, and it was able to pass, not by a lot, but it did pass. And for public safety, police and fire. So I think that that's a good thing. But a fire district can't do the 60%. It has to do the 66 and 2 thirds or temporary. There is no other funding mechanisms out there. I mean, as a fire district, like I mentioned, we don't have a problem building fire stations and putting a new apparatus in that fire station. The problem is the personnel. I have a fire station that's been sitting now for a year and two months empty because we can't staff it. So now that we've passed the temporary, we're trying to go through that process to hire people. And the builders did pay for that. I'm fortunate in one of my districts, STAR does not believe in urban renewal. So I don't lose funding from urban renewal. My Middleton Fire District does suffer from urban renewal. fire district is one of the biggest that's one of the biggest incremental values that go into an urban renewal district and we've asked to opt out of we got that law changed a couple years ago to where we can opt out obviously we never want to put a city at any sort of a financial risk so if they need that money because they're already indebted then But we don't have to be in any of them moving forward. I really don't know any other funding mechanisms that are out there. Do you capture any shared revenue or sales tax? So the amount of sales tax that my two get are pretty minimal. And it's one of those numbers that we use in our budget as one-time purchase items. Because in the 13 years that I've been there, we have gotten as low as $20,000. And we've got as much as $180,000. But that's one of those items that typically gets altered or fixed or, in the legislative mind, Can they move money around out of that? And so sometimes we get less because they have chosen to take some of that revenue sharing and give it to schools. Not that schools don't need it, but when they take portions of that money, it comes out of the amount that we get. So we do not use sales tax revenue that we get for personnel costs. We use it for one-time expenses.

Chief or Justin, either one, do you know if the city of Colwell were to, in the near future, run a bond for an emergency levy under city's rules, and then we transition to a district, does that levy money travel with the fire department to the district? Or would they have to do that again? because their rules are different. That's a great question.

There are provisions in the law for transferring already purchased capital facilities from cities to districts and vice versa. So that is a possibility. But if the election was happening decision had been made and then moved forward.

But what if the election were held before the district was formed?

I think if the voters approved it and it went through, then there are provisions in the law allowing it to be transferred to the district. That they would need to pay for that. So it would be a possibility that it could be transferred and the city and the district would have to agree on the terms. Thank you if I may. It's also important to point out if I might before I forget it. You know, it's easy for us to criticize 959 because the legislative process is hard, but it's important to realize that legislature could give local governments at this point and so it's it's easy to criticize things and so cities and counties have you know launched things from sidelines saying this bill is not good because of the budgeting by initiative provisions but out of legislature at this point and so keep that in perspective and the chief's raising awareness on that point has been instrumental in getting it passed and so that has been he has done a great job in raising awareness through his interviews on the ranch podcast and he is essential and instrumental in getting that bill passed. And it will benefit Idaho immensely.

Thank you, Justin. Thank you.

Chief. Just to clarify, if you're truly looking at a bond, a bond is a separate line item on your property tax. And it has a levy rate just like the school district, fire district, et cetera. So if you're truly asking about a bond, It already is accounted for in the county's levy rate and would be paid off through the county's levy. on your property tax.

I was looking for more of an emergency services levy as what Chief was talking about.

Sorry, I thought I heard bond. And that's where I was.

I think that, again, this is my opinion. So take it with a grain of salt. I think if you are successful in passing a public safety levy increase at the 60% threshold, that was permanent. then you would obviously ask for enough money to help your fire and police department, which would increase the fire department's budget. This is not something that can happen in the next three months. This takes a long time. So I'm just going to say that the fire department budget is $15 million today, and it's going to be, after this public safety levy is passed, it'll be $18 million. So then when you go through this process, if I'm successful in changing the language from annexation to consolidation, then the $18 million would move because that is your new M&O budget for the fire department. Does that make sense? Yes. And so I think to answer your question is if it was done as the city, and allocated to the fire department, and then when it consolidated with the rural district, that's the number that would, the new number would be what is consolidated with the district, so yes. Mr. Mayor.

But it would still be subject to the annexation 90%.

That is what I'm getting rid of. So it was never our intent, and it was not leadership's intent 90%. The intent was to take the MNO budget from the fire department, the MNO budget from the district, put it together, create a new levy rate for the new area.

Change will come to fruition.

In my perfect world? and be done before the governor signs it, and it would be backdated to January. Start in January, yes.

Take one more question, then we'll take a break after that.

Mr. Mayor, Chief, with regards to 765 that you've mentioned a couple but minimal experience with the legislature. Sometimes they just run out of steam in a legislative session. They don't have the will or the ambition to continue. How optimistic are you that they will to consolidation language? Do you think it's a strong likelihood of overcoming that legislative scrutiny, or do you think you have enough momentum to see that change happen?

John Potter, The legislative session is typically a few months, but what i've learned is that the session last that long, but the business continues. John Potter, I have talked to some leadership leadership can obviously change in in I think. John Potter, I have the current speaker. that understands the mistake that was made and is willing to move forward with making that change. But that does not mean in November he will retain that. I have not talked, I don't know who that was. And it isn't just the speaker. It just happens to live right down the street from me. Talk to him on almost a daily basis. So. I've explained and and he says, yeah, that's. They seem to always forget that there is annexation rules that cities have. There's annexation rules that. Take into consideration. the effects of House Bill 389 in fire district law. Fire district law has its own piece of annexation. That's the piece that was missed. And it's my fault. I didn't, when they finished the legislation, it was Representative Sautter and the State Tax Commission that piece. I mean, pretty optimistic that it would change i mean i i think that i could talk to a number of of folks in that building and they would understand this because it's holiday just like we do with fire districts authority been through legislative services it's already ready to present and this conversation to this point

Quick 10 minute break, we'll be back. I'll go ahead and start back. I'll turn back over to the chief.

Thank you, Mayor. Before we get started with Chief Wendelsdorf, Kirk Carpenter, fire chief of Nampa Fire District, has joined us. He's also the president of the Idaho Fire Chiefs Association. He'll be speaking a little bit today after Chief Wendelsdorf. With that, Chief Wendelsdorf, also a former Caldwell firefighter and fire chief.

Just over 30 years with the city of Caldwell, and it was a great time.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you for being here. So just in order, I was asked to give an overview of the district itself. So this kind of gives you the purple area on the map, kind of gives you a little bit of an idea. I'll zoom in here in just a minute. Everything in here is listed as, or different colors, I should say, are the fire districts, with the exceptions of the cities are grayed for whatever reason the county did that at the time. But just kind of gives you an overall view. We're about 100 square miles. that we cover all the way down from Lake Lowell all the way up to the county line as we go through this. So here's a little bit closer picture of the area that we serve or the district serves. The red border, I'm not technology savvy. So, the red border that looks like my daughter drew it on there, nothing against my daughter is the area of impact is defined in the city of Caldwell's comprehensive plan, or the area that you have defined for development, your comp plan. So it kind of gives you an idea of how much of the district will eventually be coming back or coming into the city of Caldwell itself as we continue to grow. One of the challenges that we face in this process is in the gray area of Caldwell City for the city fire department, you'll see little specks of that purple, lavender, whatever color you want to call it, of the fire district. And so those are areas of the district, or excuse me, areas of the city surrounding it that have never been annexed into the city. So there's a checkerboard effect, if you will, within the city. And that Possibly down the road could create some challenges. It may not, but it would be beneficial if at some point in time we could work together and maybe clear that up if we don't come together as one district as we move forward with this. So that kind of gives you a ballpark idea of where we're at. I'm going to skip this one and come back if we need to. So my understanding is that the city of Caldwell's value is about $10 billion. If we annex that into the fire district at 90%, it comes down to about $9 billion. At our current levy rate for the fire district at 10 mills, It would generate about $9 million, $9.5 million in new revenue for the district. Our current funding or taxpayer funding out in the district is 2.8 for a total of $12 million. I think that's going to be a little short of what we're looking for. I think we were looking for more of I put up there 18 as a projected, maybe less, maybe a little bit more. But we also have to remember that we're always two years in the rears. So the property tax value that you're working with today for the FY27 value was the value of the city on December 31st of 2025. And so we're always two years behind So truly, instead of this being an FY27, it would be FY28. That's a mistake on the slide because if we did the annexation before December 31st of this year, it would show up as we're starting to do the FY28 budget a year from now. So that kind of gives you the overview of the budget. or the annexation point that is my understanding and talking with our attorney. How the annexation works, I think Chief Tominski hit on it very well when he said, it's the plan. putting the plan together on how you're going to or how we are going to make this work and how we're going to put this together. Included in that is the timelines. It needs to address a multitude of issues. And the more of the issues that we can address, for example, the smoother the transition occurs at that particular point in time. Some of the more seasoned folks sitting around the table here, I'm gonna pick on you, Eric and I, will remember we had a annexation that we did, the Caldwell Rural Fire District did, of the City of Notice back in 2006, 2007 area. And that became a very, very slippery slope. Everybody's like, let's just get this done. Let's just get this done. And it created a huge number of issues for us under a very tight timeframe that there was no need for. I think time is the key thing here. Most of the and the annexation occurs, most everything is open for negotiations to be part of that plan. What happens with fire department assets or stations or engines or those types of things? My personal opinion, it's my personal opinion only, is we own nothing. The taxpayers own everything and we manage it for them. And so having stations transfer or equipment transfer would just make sense at that particular point in time. Once the plan is agreed upon and the timelines are agreed upon, it's a very simple process to move forward to finalize it. We choose a date and time or my understanding is we basically choose a date and time when it will happen. Hopefully before December 31st of whatever year. So it comes up next year. And, uh, the council would choose a date and time when to dissolve. The fire department, um, and the fire district would choose a date and time when to annex that in usually within. Minute of each other, but there are some technicalities that that exists there and it can be a fairly quick process once that's decided upon. It sounds simple, but we have an entrance. We have an exit agreement with the union or the city would. The district has an entrance agreement with the union that would all need to be negotiated. And from a union standpoint, and I'm speaking out of turn here a little bit, there is no past practice when the transition occurs. And so it behooves them and administration have as much documented as possible and agreed upon and signed off so we have something to refer back to other than what we used to do that when we were with the city okay but you're not with the city anymore or the union use we have all of that addressed as we go through the process future funding uh This is the key here is the long range funding and developing a strategy by the commissioners at that time as to what that's going to look like with our budget goals. Making sure that everything is in balance. So, when we look at impact fees, and we say that. our impact fees are X number of dollars, that that X number of dollars builds, as Chief Tominski talked about, the new fire station and apparatus, and that the tax revenue generated by those homes or residents are enough to pay for the staffing of that station. I'm going to make up a number here. If we decide that 6,000 new homes generate a new station, we need to make sure that 6,000 new homes generates enough money and impact fees to pay for the equipment and the station. At the same time, the property tax revenue generated by that area is enough to generate the staffing and the ongoing maintenance and operations of that station that goes along with it. Maintaining that balance is critical on everybody's part because all we have is property tax at that. Responsibilities transfer that's part of the working plan and what transfers usually at some point in time there's a drop dead date where everything transfers over to the new. District or to the district itself and the responsibilities that go along with that. 1 of the questions that would need to be addressed early on. Are we going to do a 3 person board or a 5 person board? And how are we going to break that up into zones for elections and things along those lines? And so it's all part of the plan as we move forward in the transition. And with that, I'll. stand for any questions. Kind of wanted to go over a 100,000 foot view.

Mark, on that checkerboard map that you had there, are all those smaller areas within city limits or some of that county?

So when you look at the areas that are purple or Lavender or whatever inside the gray and surrounded on all sides. That technically is in the county in the fire district, because it hasn't been annexed into the city. And let me give you an example. I live up on quail ridge, which is basically Montana deets way area. There is about a 3 acre parcel directly behind me. That is that was not annexed into the city. now today you can go a mile in any direction from that location and it's in the city but they are not so some of the open burning some of the things that county residents are allowed to do they are able to do because they're not in the city and the people surrounding them like myself are like but they can't do that oh yes they can because they're in the Uh, personally, and I'm speaking from. A citizen of Caldwell, I would like to see those areas force annexed. Because it puts everybody on the same page, but that's for a different date, a different discussion.

Just a follow up question. Uh, I know some of the concerns that the residents have is. If we go to a fire district and, you know, you have a board and everything, but. Uh, it's similar to a union, I would assume, right? I mean, do you folks come to the city and require whatever increases you do for personnel? No. You don't? No.

Who dictates how much? So what happens is the fire district is like a school district. It's a separate taxing entity, and they have elected officials. So the three commissioners sitting next to me are elected just like you were elected in your elections. and we could go up to five, but three to five is what's allowed in the statute, and they're elected officials, and we are our own taxing district. So at that particular point in time, if the city were to become part of the district, the control goes to those three to five commissioners that are elected by the public. And they set the budget, which then goes to the county, just like you do, It goes to the county, which establishes the levy rate and we get the same payments that the city does, et cetera.

Well, what they're concerned about is the taxpayers are certain about is that when you set the salaries that. Whatever they might be the board decides that, but taxpayers don't. Is that correct?

It's just like it is now. It's just like it is now for the City of Caldwell. The citizens don't decide the salaries you do as the City Council. And so that would be a correct statement. The difference is that because they're only dealing in the fire district, their budget is very transparent to see where the money's going. And I'm not saying the budget here isn't transparent, it's just a lot thicker than what our budget would be because of the police, because of parks, because of roads and sewer and water. With the fire district, it's usually more transparent because it's just dealing with the fire department.

Relative to equipment, say you folks think you need three new ladder trucks, how does that work? It's your decision, right? I mean, that's what you need.

Well, it would be the. The chief would bring that to the district commissioners. The commissioners would decide how much money we've been putting aside each year for capital purchases. And if we have enough money to do that, or do we go to the vote if we haven't saved our money to pay cash. then we would turn around and go to the voters just like you do for a bond. And it would be the choice. We still have the same requirements as you do for a budget hearing and everything else. And we ask for public's input. When I was the chief here, we had very, very few people ever show up for the budget impact or budget meetings. And I don't know what it's like now. That's a changed thought. OK. Okay, thank you real quick question.

Um. I'm assuming then that you're on the same fiscal compared to calendar. Schedule that we would be on, so, in other words, your budgets have to be pretty much done the same timeframe that ours are.

Yes, sir. We follow the same requirements as you did as you have.

So it would probably be best if we were to do this to do it in a fiscal calendar and not a. regular calendar correct because you were saying we have to do it by December 31st if we were to make a decision we have to do the annexation by December 31st we don't have to do the actual all the transition until the fiscal calendar the fiscal calendar for the next year that's what I'm trying to say is would it be better to do both at the same time and transferred in in other words in a

Fiscal calendar, because we're all start all new because we're operating always behind. If we did it, for example, let's just say it's once we annex or the annex place. Correct. It takes place the next. Budget cycle. Okay.

Okay, at the end of the fiscal year, that's what I was just trying to make sure.

So, if we did it, if we did it before December 31st, this year, it wouldn't actually impact until next fiscal until the 28.

28, so there would have to be some type of makeup or agreement. Between October 1 of your new budget for 27 and December 31st of. 27. Because the new but the new budget year would start this October one, but we don't get the money from the county until January of 28. Chief.

All right.

Chief Daniels.

Just to throw it out there to have to have some more conversation. If we were annexed by the rule fire district right now, Deborah is here. She's their treasurer for the real fire district. And aside from chief windows door. They're the only 2 employees of the fire district and so we would need to coordinate. some logistics with human resources, payroll, finance, everything else with the city or have those things in place with personnel hired or contracted with. And I think chief carpenter can probably speak to this as their transition from the city to a district. Um, it's obviously not just a light switch. There's, there's, there's lag, there's transition and there's obligations. So, um, That being said, Chief Carpenter. Good morning. The floor is yours, sir.

All right.

Thank you for being here.

Mayor and Council, thanks for having me. In talking with Chief, just learning about what Caldwell is considering, and he had asked me... and if there was benefits or negatives to the consideration of an annexation from the district. At the time, it was found that there was some advantage and that there was some tax capacity due to the differencing in levy rates, that if the district was to annex the city, that there was about a million dollars of available tax Revenue to better fund the fire department in 2016, the city council made the decision that that was not something they wanted to move forward with. Obviously, when you're looking at something like this, you represent the community. There's a lot of emotion that's behind the fire department. Communities are very proud of their of their fire service, and it really came down to an emotional decision at the time. That that was not something that they wanted to consider at that moment. Mayor clean came into office and in 2019, she directed me to follow through with another look at consolidation and annexation. We hired a consultant and galena consulting. And once again, the match proved out that there was advantage for the district to annex the city. We went through a pretty significant process over 6 months of all the details of what that would look like. What the tax ramifications would be for our citizens both inside the city and outside. a lot of difficult conversations, as you can imagine, because you have a lowly populated fire district that's currently contracting and all the fire stations sit within the city. And so you had some citizens and council members that were worried about once it if it was to move over to a commission would Would fire stations still be built within the city limits? And what's the consideration? And just a lot of opportunity to learn through the path of that we as fire chiefs and as leadership teams use data as our driving factor on where our resources need to be placed. And so we really had to prove that out in showing that what was our strategic plan moving forward, whether we were with the city or a district, that it didn't really change much, that our resources Our long term plans are all based upon the data that we receive from the type of calls we go on to the driving distances that we need to manage. And so whether we are a city or a district, those station positions or the resources didn't necessarily change in location. It just changed in how they were funded. The ultimate reason we looked at it and the annexation went through was really about what Chief Lindelsdorf was talking about. The competitive nature of city budgets, as you all are very aware, is the Nampa Fire Department needed Station 6 for more than a decade. Annually, we were requesting the additional resource, and there was never a moment in time that they could consider building the facility, let alone funding the personnel that would need to go within that fire station. There was always needs in park and streets and police and water. And ultimately, once the once the math was done, and you could see the new budget that was solely dedicated to fire and EMS response within the community. It just proved out that we would at a much faster pace be able to keep up with growth with dedicated funds for the city. There was benefit. Obviously, when the annexation occurs, you saw the formula there, the tax, the property tax that funded the fire department went with us. However, the city was able to retain the portion of revenue that they were funding us with. I know a lot of times when cities try and relay property tax to their community, it is police and fire that take up the full amount of property tax. That's just the cost of those two services. And in doing that, people felt like the full amount of the fire department should have been reduced from that property tax levy. But if Doug Racine was here from the city of Nampa, he would tell you that all divisions within the city are proportionally funded by property tax and revenue. And it seems to me from the experiences I'm having, it seems to be about the same. Somewhere around 78% is property tax and 22% is revenue. And so when we left the city, we left with our $10 million of property tax. We went through the process of setting our new budgets and. And then house bill 389 came into play right after we had made the vote for annexation. That's significant because the fire district very similar to almost exactly set up as you are now was a 3Million dollar a year budget. The city's fire department was 12.4, and you have a smaller agency with a 3Million dollar budget annexing a very large agency that now has an 8% cap that wasn't there at the vote of annexation. So spent a lot of time down at the capital was at the time. Senator rice. Trying to explain what was going to happen if we couldn't get. A pass through 1 year, so that the legislature did give us. 1, if the annexation occurred before the law of 389 came into play, then they allowed it to happen without the caps. So we were the last the last lucky. Agency that was able to do an annexation without the 8% cap. Throughout the process, we learned lessons all along the way and you've spoken just in the short time. I've been here. You've spoken about many of the lessons learned 1 is asset transfer and much like chief windows dwarf. I'm a personal believer that the fire engines we have in the facilities that we, we operate in. Are not owned by us at the fire department. They are owned by the taxpayers and knowing the history you have with your district. They're owned by all the taxpayers within the city and the district, because they've had a formula in which they've shared cost all of those items. And so our intent was to transfer all assets. There was some, there was some sticky ones. We had a public safety building that house police and fire. That was built by urban renewal dollars and was still being paid off in a bond. That was chosen by the city not to transfer over to the fire department and then our training ground sits in the growth path of our wastewater treatment plant. They were, they were not interested in transferring that asset to us either rather than just allow us to use it until they need it. so those things had to be agreed upon those and some of those can be very difficult conversations because you can imagine as a as a fire department or the fire district the cost of building a new training facility uh can be millions of dollars tens of millions of dollars and so the thought of having to to do that into the future is is a little worrisome however uh we continue to just keep our our eyes on on the fact that as a district we knew we would be able to open fire station six within the first three years of our existence as the new district If we were to stay with the city, the timeline was 2031 and I think if we revisited the city today, that wouldn't even be possible. Now, as it had thought to have been back back into 2020, I would say we probably would be looking even further into the 2030 before that 6 station would have been open. As a separate district, we chose at the time to traverse the gap that you were talking about. We did change our, our fiscal year to January through December during the annexation and we moved from 3. fire commissioners to five to better represent the whole community knowing that the three commissioners lived within the rural district at the time both council and commission wanted it to represent the whole and so redistricted re-sub-districted to five and five new commissioners were elected through the through the process um The gap that you were talking about from October to January was funded through reserves of both the city and the district that was mutually agreed upon prior to the annexation. So, both paid as if we were still operating as 2 separate entities. They paid their portion of that 90 days out of reserves and then. The year of annexation, all of us employees stayed under the city, using city resources such as finance and HR for that last year. And then January 1 of 2021, we became the new district. And all of those responsibilities came on to the fire department. Lessons learned. Not a lot of infrastructure in our organization at the time. So you had fire chiefs doing HR. You had a fire chief doing payroll. We took up the role of the city, honestly realized and felt the value of the city resources that we had always enjoyed. We were pretty, pretty stacked and not a much not much bandwidth realizing the new the new ownership we had over those portions of our organization. It did take us about 2 years to recover and actually put those things in place. So we now have an HR director. We now have a finance. a finance head. But it was the ability to do that in that we had full, we weren't sharing our tax dollars anymore. So along with our local firefighter union, we collaborated, we worked together. They chose over the first three years of our existence to take very low pay raises because they could see the needs of the organization needed to be met. We never experienced that with the city, because as Mark said, the budget book is so much thicker and I think as firefighters just in general, we always have that question that there's more money somewhere. And so there was never that opportunity with it with a taxing district, like a fire district. There is the money is the money that we have. We're 97% funded property tax. We have a little bit of revenue and that's a lot of times dependent upon grants. So when our tax dollars come in, that is the amount of money we have. It's very easy to negotiate over because as an organization, we get to decide where those funds go and what the highest need is for the community and making sure we're maintaining the service that we provide. So for us, that financial transition was positive. We've been able to open station six. We have plans for station seven and eight within the next eight years. All in the timeframe that the city would have only been able to open 1 station if we had stayed with the city. So, I like to believe that for our organization and our partnership with the city has grown just more positively. We're still included in department head meetings. We attend budget hearings. We have a very good relationship as we move forward, and that's the intent for the future. But the hardest lessons learned were really in just making sure we stay collaborative. It's easy when you no longer use city resources to become disconnected. When you're not seeing HR on a regular basis, you can lose those connections. And so just being very intentional with our communications and our contact with our city partners. making sure that we're involved in all the all the things that we had always been involved in whether that was um charity to boys and girls club those things don't go away we don't act any different same employees and same stations we just are funded differently and a little bit more uh for us it's significantly easier to plan on because we know exactly what we're getting we're no longer competing for tax dollars with other divisions of the city And our commissioners who are also elected are so focused on one thing, and that is the emergency response to our community. So we find all those things very valuable. As per negatives, other than the amount of work it is, although it is an easy process, you have to be very diligent, and it is a lot of work, especially for the staff of the fire department. You need to follow through with all of those Plan agreements, making sure that things get tied up. We still were 5 years out and we still have several things that we work with the city regularly to try and wrap up and they're just all weird. Like, the land in which our station 5 sits on is actually on the airport property. So it can't be sold to us. So we can't own the land that our fire station sits on. And so we just make sure every year we're paying attention to that lease, that we're following the rules, that we have good communication with the city, that this is our intent moving into the future. And those little intricacies will happen, I think, in any type of annexation or consolidation. So happy to stand for any questions. If you want to know more about the process, we held town halls throughout the process, and it really was our citizens who tipped the scales when it came to the annexation. Once they could see the funding opportunity for the fire department, some of our most prevalent community members were the ones that were our biggest supporters through the process. yeah, happy to answer any questions about the process or our budget or any of those areas.

Thank you, Chief. We appreciate your perspective and experience.

Chief, thanks for being here. I got to tell you before I ask my question, we have former chief, former firefighter, current chief. And then this is a tremendous collection of substantial amount of talent and experience.

Thank you.

I appreciate that. And so kudos to the to the city of Caldwell, who has employed such great people. And so my question for you is that this transition happened, and you went through all these little steps that Chief, as we talked about here earlier before you arrived. Do you have any, does your public say our fire department was better when they were with the city? Do you feel that your service is better now? How is your general opinion about the pulse of the community that you serve?

I would say that in the last five years, I've received two negative comments about the fire department. almost daily get positive. If we look, so as I stated earlier, we're very data driven. If we look at the data from 2020 to today, our response times have gone down almost two minutes on average because of the addition of station six that almost instantly took us down a minute on average on response time, which is what we, that's one of our most important measures is the quicker we can get to the scene, whether it's an EMS call that life is in danger, or to a fire call to keep it from growing exponentially. Knowing that our response times have reduced, even while our call volume continues to climb on an average of 10% a year, that to me is a good measure to say that we are providing a better service today than we were five years ago. Even with the growth occurring during the time, interactions with our community. We don't have a lot of negative interactions. We're pretty open. I mean, one of those citizens is sitting here regularly. I'm talking to several of our citizens. We don't get off scot-free. We're held accountable and actually invite that. Now one of my good friends, Larry Olmstead and Hubert Osborne, I've sat in a room numerous times explaining the whys behind our whats. Here's an example. Our station six has three bays. One of those bays is not drive-through. It was designed to be drive-through, but it was Hubert Osborne that convinced me that I didn't need to pay a huge amount of money for storage, that I could build storage somewhere else if I swore I was going to keep an extra fire engine. And so, instead of 3 full drive through base, we shrunk at our citizens. Recommendation we shrunk that station down to cost less. We don't get any negative. I think if we do, it's usually a communication thing that we have the opportunity in that moment to meet them wherever they're at and describe the why behind what we're doing and then listen. Mainly, we do take it very serious to listen and make sure we're attending to all concerns. But I would say in my perspective, only an increase in reliability and an increase in, I guess, faith in our organization and respect. is what I've experienced from the leadership portion.

So is it fair to say, Chief, or Mr. Mayor, one more question? So is it fair to say that making this transition greater transparency, greater reliability, greater functionality, greater performance by the fire department over the last five years?

Yes. I haven't experienced a downturn, so I could see if we went into a downturn, we may have some challenges. I've been very lucky as a fire chief, as all of my years as a chief, we've gone through growth. And so when we get our new property tax and we follow state statute, just like cities do, and when we can see those new numbers, we've been very lucky in that Nampa's growing. So we are getting funds to grow with the community. I would suggest if we go into a downturn and our budget still needs to increase, then we would probably start getting some feedback from our community of, hey, we're in a downturn. You shouldn't be taking more taxes, but it's still growing. So I've had to experience that yet. But yes, I would say efficiency wise and transparency for sure. We try and be very transparent with our numbers because that's what that's how we prove we're using the citizens dollars at the very to the very fullest. then efficiency wise i would also say morale and cultural wise we're still napa proud i would speak just for myself everything i have in my life is because of my community of napa it's very important to me and i think that that's what our organization's view and mission is is it's our citizens first and and we're super proud to to be that and as a district solely relying on property tax it's almost in that ownership piece of that none of this of what we use is ours we do we do we do care for it as if it was someone else's and it's just ours to use and it's our job to make sure um as you guys all experience you're paying so much more for firing right now in my in my young chief years we had a seven year uh seven year replacement plan for fire engines As you guys know, fire engines are now over a million dollars. Knowing that that's not a possibility anymore based on the amount of money that comes into our special taxing district, we just have to change our plans. So how do we care for a fire engine knowing that now it's going to have to be a 10-year replacement plan? We don't have a choice. Those are the opportunities.

in one of the bills. In your opinion, based on what you went through, especially through 389, would it be in this council's interest to maybe hold off and see if we can't get that cleared up in the next session?

Well, I can tell you the guy that is going to fix it is sitting right there.

I do this right now with Nampa, and you were set in Nampa doing this the way we are right now. Would you want to wait, or would you want to do it?

um so there's some weird pieces to it this is just my opinion correct your department can't afford to lose that ten percent um that that's significant uh if that's the fun that's staffing for one station um and so um Knowing that that's just a few months away, I would. I would cross my fingers and support Greg in his endeavors. We already have some verbal commitment to fix that. That wasn't intended that that annexation piece would apply to that. They really truly were trying to create an avenue to where. Fire districts and fire city fire departments could consolidate. and the way that consolidation bill works works really well i think most of you are aware we're currently looking at a consideration of consolidation with cuna and there's a lot of moving pieces in there but the consolidation bill is pretty easy they take our two budgets put them together and it sets the levy rate for the whole new district a little different in annexation where the the levy rate from the fire district would be what would be applied but that 10 is a significant amount of money yeah so i would wait till the bill was fixed

One last one. Since you've moved to a district, it's a big deal when the two are working together. How has your relationship with NPD changed?

There was one decision we made that caused the most. So we were dispatched by Napa Police Department up until just February. And actually, as partnerships within the fire service grow, there was a huge opportunity for Nampa Fire Department to switch to Canyon County. Our relationship with RPD is amazing. I don't see many fire departments and police departments that have the relationship we have, other than that the police chief's a lot snappier and quicker and wittier than I. We tease each other a lot. We have police officers in our stations all the time. We're part of their TACMED program and vice versa as they are with our investigative side of our department. So we have great relationships and the intent is to never, we've had that for such a long time that I don't know that would ever go away just because it's a priority. We train on the same training grounds and although they own it, we maintain it and we both use it. So we have a great relationship. So that I don't think will ever change.

who are you that it helps to have this perspective. So one of the big things that council members face a lot is land use. And we have two major school districts in Caldwell that give us input on development, et cetera. Does the district get involved with council? Do they submit letters that kind of thing on recommendations when large land use things?

Yes, so we still play the same role that we did when we were with the city, which is really by the graciousness of the council, right? Because of the partnership, so what we do is we provide call data for any for any larger. development that's coming. We had a process in place where they'll send it to us. We'll review it and then we'll send back to council. This is what the impact would be on your fire department. This is this is the long term, I guess, projection of what would be needed by us to service that that approved development.

Okay, so so that that relationship that you had before you separated as far as input still continues now. Okay. And then, um, uh,

were there um any open bonds at the time you guys separated yes those transitioned all right or uh they um the bond is actually through the urban renewal district um and it's for the public safety building um so that's the only bond that's open and so it's the urban renewal that actually pays on the bond but it was for a fire and police administrative building but it didn't transfer with us and did you

CONSIDER OR DID YOU DO ANY LONG-TERM EMERGENCY SERVICES LEVEES TO HELP WITH THIS TRANSITION?

NO.

ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU, SIR. APPRECIATE IT.

ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU. THANK YOU, CHIEF. EXPERTISE AND INFORMATION.

HAPPY TO HELP.

VERY MUCH APPRECIATED.

Just find a room really quick before we break. Or did you have a question? I'm sorry.

I wanted to hear from Glenn.

Yes.

Sorry, do we want to go and make that transition? Absolutely. Speak real quick.

You want to speak? Yeah. Up here so he can choke me. introduction i'm lynn rimby i'm a nampa citizen and i'm chairman of a group called the concerned citizens of canyon county committee i've been asked to check into our fire our conversion and i'm going to report to you as as i what i found and so you can take it for what it's worth thank you mayor City Council commissioners and honorable firemen. I was recently asked how the conversion from the Nampa department went to the fire district had gone. The question prompted me to look closely at available data in the process. It seems that I may have stirred up the harness nest. Looking back to September 14th of 2020, the presentation by Galena said the conversion would be net neutral and physical impact to the taxpayers, net neutral to Nampa City budget, no change to the quality of level of service and adequate governance and continued sensitivity to taxpayers. The conversion became evident on January 1st of 2021. The final budget for 2020 was approximately $13 million, and 2.5 came from the rural district, as I understand. The 2026 budget is now $44.9 million. Based on those numbers, I would suggest that we've fallen short of somewhat what was presented in 2020. An additional perspective, during the same five-year time period, the consumer price index increased by about 22%. So I guess what I'm saying is I'm glad this is being done, but I just wanted to give you folks an idea of what I saw. And in fact, I'm meeting with Chief Carpenter on Monday to discuss budget. So we're moving in that direction. And I hope that it can be taken into consideration as you move forward with this process.

Any questions?

You have budget details if you have questions about the budget. Thank you. Thank you, sir, for that bit of information. I think, Chief, it's important to clarify your budget. Yeah. So when we publish our budget, it's a little different than some public have on hand at the time of the publication. And so when you saw last year in the paper a $44 million budget, that's publishing all dollars that are held within our accounts. So that also includes the remainder of the year in which we're currently operating in. So we still have 50% of a year budget left in that $44 million, which for now, a quick number, is just a little over $10 million. We had about 6M dollars in impact fees. We also had some other. Her funds in those in those dollars. So our, our budget for the operational budget for 2026 is actually right at 24M. That is using some reserves for several capital projects that we have. So it, it could be confusing. There's definitely. in an effort to be transparent, it definitely can cause a confusing picture. And it looks like we've doubled our budget in just five years. We only can take the 3% statutorily, just as a city, as well as growth. We have taken... Mayor Mrakas, For gone two years we twice we took 1% for gone, as well as one year we took 2% for a capital project, those are the opportunities, you can take two and then they come off the role so. Yeah, I think I think in the, in the future, we'll continue to to publish. Try and publish out all the money that we have. So people know exactly the amount of money that we, we deal with and we care for. But I definitely can see in some of our citizens view where that would look weird to have a 44Million dollar budget. Posted for. for a department that was just 16 million in 2020. Councilor.

And just to be clear, your budget, your overall budget is still held to the 8% cap, correct? So now fire districts can go to the 15%. I'm just saying your past budget. Up until this year, you have been held to the 8%.

And historically for us, we see between 2% and 3% growth. So historically for us, we've been growing at about 6% annually. in our budget, 3% property tax increase. And then we take all growth, obviously, through the process. But like this year, for this year, we'll be right at 5%. We only had 2% growth in Nampa. And last year, we were right at 6% total, 3% increase and 3% growth.

And since creation, have you taken any kind of major mill rate change? So you haven't applied for any kind of mill rate change or anything like that?

And that the looking into the future, because we have the, just as Caldwell did, had your urban renewal or sunset comes up in 4 years. We're actually very healthy right now. Very sustainable. So we have plans like, once our urban renewal sunsets, that's our opportunity to open those next stations because we'll, I don't know what. You guys had an amazing urban renewal district that was very successful. I don't know if ours is that successful, but we just know what ours will be. So we don't see a time in our future where any type of levy override or levy increase would be needed unless something drastic happens. And in my mind, that would probably be apparatus. If we had a large event that took out several of our apparatus, we just don't have the depth to be able to purchase that type of thing without help. But besides that, we're on track to do levy overrides and not go out for bonds. Thank you.

Appreciate that additional information.

So, Chief, one more, just to be clear. If a taxpayer comes up to you and said it looks at the 20 million roughly and then the 4 million, what's your plan?

a simple answer yeah uh that we do have reserves um and that that 40 million still included 50 of the year we're in so um just with the the four reserve funds we have so we have one for for apparatus one for capital our impact fees which have to be very specific in use and then our actual reserve which we try to keep at 30 those make up along with the budget remaining of the current year and those make up that 20 or in this case 20 million uh difference between our operational budget and what was published in the community okay so the reserves were included in that 20 million dollars okay i'll put in the 44 to be more 44 yeah all right it's 11 24. anything else anything council

ONE'S EYES FLOATING RIGHT NOW, NEED A BATHROOM BREAK. ALMOST LUNCH TIME. YEAH, WE'LL TAKE A 10. LUNCH TIME. And the lunch, we're gonna have a working lunch. So we continue moving forward to the next section, section six, keep track of financial, legal and governance evaluation. And the fire chiefs, and if we've already covered something, you just want to do that part of the show here. So with that, let's begin.

He's over here.

yeah yeah um so for the for the folks in the room uh michael keith uh i'm with zion's public finance uh we uh are the city of caldwell's municipal advisor uh and as we kind of uh have kind of learned about this trying to just really be a resource for the city so what does that mean like we do a lot of work around fire district cities bonds debts levies urban renewals how all these different pieces kind So as the city is kind of moving through this and making decisions in terms of what's going to happen with the fire district moving in potentially to its own district, the city reproducing its levies, what that means for urban renewal, the fact that the city has issued a couple of GEO bonds, right? It's currently has that on its book that's dead. Uh, so you catch them, you know, work through that had some challenges with that. Right? It was a little different for, I know, you know, city of Napa on that, but there are some things that are, we're going to need to think through in terms of those risks and assets. I guess the city also has a couple of fire fire truck leases, right? But it's also on the books that would. we have to figure out how to you know reassign what does that mean for fire district budgets what does that mean for you know city's budgets and so really we just wanted to kind of you know provide our expertise and help any way we can we're starting to do some of these modeling thinking about what some of those long-term you know risks you know are as the fire district potentially becomes its its own district so um so really like you're gonna help in any way

So I've been doing a lot of research on this and Raylan and I, the previous finance director, have had a lot of discussions in this. And I just want to first off start by saying that, you know, thank you for all of you for coming here. I think everything you've said today has been very, very good to hear. I had a lot of questions myself. So it's been nice to have you all in the whole team. grab you and talk to each of you individually about all the questions that I'm having as we transition through this as a city. I think that the numbers presented today so far are accurate. They're in line with what I've been looking at, and the discussions that I've been having with the fire chief. And the concerns that I've had have also been addressed today in relation to the difficulties in transferring. Um, when you look at the district moving, it's essentially starting their own business and they currently do have city services. So. You know, not only in their 1st year, are they going to have to look at. With this annexation, which may hopefully get changed in the language that it does significantly hurt them going into a new district in that those 1st couple of years and. We are very similar to Nampa. The 1 difference that I do see in us transition. Where we've talked about our budget, we do have a 16Million. A little over 16Million dollar budget, I think currently as it stands. That we're proposing for 2027. And that is very close to Nampa's $15 million that was thrown out. And so we do have a lot of similarities with Nampa's transition. kind of a deficit for fire within the city. So even though their budget currently sits at 16 in expenditures, their revenue is sitting more around the 14 level. So that is also something that will have to be considered in the transition. one bill store provided some numbers. I think those are pretty close. And if you saw that there was kind of a 5 million deficit in that first year. And that's about right. If you take the amount that the new rural district will get and the amount that they're currently budgeting now, You know, and and 1 of the things of those numbers, I, I presume don't have are the new positions that will be needed the. The finance, as mentioned earlier, right? These are things that the city is currently providing. I think it will be a culmination of working with the city to work those details out. And make sure that we're both on In a grants with how we're going to transition that I don't think that they'll be successful without At least a little bit of city assistance at the beginning how much and where that's going to come from is going to happen We looked at internally the specifics. It's going to be a very complicated and detailed process and make sure that that we're both going to gain in the long run from the transition. Ultimately, with new legislation coming out for fire districts. I do think it would benefit them to have more budget capacity in the long run. And I do think that the first couple of years would be a tricky transition. both of us, but I think in the long run it would benefit them as well as the city as long as we could maintain continued partnerships, positive partnerships. That being said, Michael and I have talked about specifics and mostly related to the bonding and the assets and the leases and that all gets tricky. And I feel we can work through that.

And one other thing I want to say is timing.

That was also talked about today, and I think that that is really important. Going into this, I mean, even when we talked about it at the budget session just within the last couple of weeks, and we said we need to have a determination, I don't want, I'm going to do my best to not try and make budget be a factor in pushing this forward important to move forward just because the city has its own financial risks that are somewhat unrelated maybe to the fire department because we have so much more that we're looking at. I do agree that you know it it it's been talked about transparency within a city

know by a district having more transparency, and I don't know if we're using the right word transparency is giving all the information.

I think cities do that. And I think fire districts intentions are to do that. And that is what we both are doing. But when we present information on the city side, it is both together, it's much harder for people to understand. It's a it's a more, you know, it's hard to break out the general fund and say, these are all the little, you know, pieces within the general fund. And so it's harder to explain to the public and to the department sometimes where that money is going. And so I wouldn't say it makes it more transparent, but it makes it cleaner to the public where they can see and understand a little bit easier than Bigfoot with a city that's got, you know, I think the city of Caldwell has more funds than any other in the Treasure Valley. So we have a lot that we're tracking. And so the more complicated it gets, the more people begin to wonder what's going on because it gets harder to understand. So I do think having them as a separate entity would provide some clarity and ease of access to that information. Not that we couldn't provide it with the city, but it is harder to break out and delineate. It takes more time and effort. So one thing that I do want to have Michael just kind of touch on a little bit is, which we haven't, we've talked a little

Yeah, I can, I can speak to that. So as some of you guys know, there have been several changes to urban renewal laws over the last, you know, several years, right? And good or bad, right? The move when you look at most of the driver now of urban renewal are primarily the county and city tax, right? They do that. And so with with a reduction right if if the city is going to reduce its its city taxes on that and move that over to the fire district, the fire districts and ambulance districts now have to opt in. Right? And so if they're, you know, if there is an agreement, the fire district cops and great, then there may be not as much of an impact. it's not a requirement, you know, to do that. And as the rural fire district is the city would be, or the city fire district would be forming with right is currently outside of not part of urban renewal. So if the fire district decided that it didn't want to be part of that the city would have to be prepared for that reduction and for renewal revenues on its existing and future right any kind of future plans that you guys would can So that's something to kind of consider. The other thing with some of the new changes to urban renewal, this has been challenged, but to know that it's on the books, that if an urban renewal doesn't have any debt, there's still that option now for fire districts or ambulance districts to opt out of that district, right? As you guys think about your transition on this, we're going to want to think about some of those potential impacts, potentially, too, verbally and kind of across the board for the city.

I don't know who else here from staff has much to say. There's a lot of things on this agenda here that I can briefly go over. If you guys would like, we've got our HR director over there. And so I don't know if she's had time to really dive into how that would impact the payroll side. Obviously, our fire department does have a labor agreement. So that that would have to be. more internally with the rural district as to how they're gonna deal with that. And make sure, as Mark said that it's kind of in line with whatever they need to have in there as that change takes place. But a lot of the a lot of the payroll is driven by that. So and processes and pay, etc. Um, you know, finance, I mean, I don't there's a lot of detail in all of these things. So I don't want to waste time by talking about things that really should probably be specialized. We do have a fleet maintenance portion, we'd have to look at and identify currently how many vehicles they are that they have under that fleet, and what it would cost to come out of that I haven't done any projections on that yet. Um, All of these items here are things that I think that the city would have to sit down and analyze. They're not easy things to just kind of talk about. You've got sunsetting city support. Where's that going to come from? How are we going to streamline that? Transition and timeline I think is very important as well. I've got some recommendations, but there's some fluidity in a lot of these things and negotiations within a lot of these things that we will have to have internally. Support agreements will probably be necessary, I would assume, at least in the beginning, to assist them in the transition. Risk management or iCrimp, that's the complicated one. We have a lot of equipment machinery that's insured. Who's going to take on those responsibilities? And again, back to transfer of assets. How will we deal with the assets that are leased right now? As Michael mentioned, probably have to work through some of the legalities with him on that and with our legal department as well. IT. That'll be one we'll have to talk to the IT director about and get all the details on how incorporated those systems are with each other's softwares. So there's a lot of work. This is gonna be a lot of work on city staff time, finance department, IT, HR, legal, all of us are gonna have to be involved and it will require over the next couple of months to come up with the basics as if, if we do want to push this timeline forward to December, and try and make a decision now, I think that some key things as mentioned would be timeline, we need to discuss that the basics of what needs to be and maybe legal can provide information on the specifics of the priorities of what would need to be delineated in that initial agreement. I think that if it if we get to a point where We find that there's so much that's going to be needed if there's a full contract MOU that's going to be need to be required before the end of this current fiscal year. I don't know if rushing into it right now would be feasible, but I don't fully know and I don't know from a legal perspective what that document entails or looks like to say we've officially made the decision. if it's just a document that says we've officially made the decision and here's some timelines, we could potentially come to that decision in December and have a year to figure out the master agreement or sub agreements that we want to look into. But if it's, we gotta have the whole master agreement by December, that's gonna be messy. We're gonna miss things. I'm just telling you that right now. So, um, I think we need to do some work on our end to figure out exactly exactly maybe get an example from another city, or if you guys have some examples that you guys could provide, we can look at that together and say, what exactly do we need to be providing. Uh. and then decide whether or not this is something we're going to move forward with now or later i think that's probably the biggest decision that we need to kind of hone down first before we go uh into the the rest of the priorities that are needed so that's my that's kind of my uh do you have anything else that you want to talk about michael

I don't think so at this point. I mean, I think Michelle's kind of hit on key things that we really do need to think through. Certainly on the asset side, how that's going to work. You know, I know City of Ketchum has been messy that's going through this right now. They had a lawsuit, you know, and they tried to transfer the station that was geo bond funded. a citizens initiative um so we need to kind of look at that kind of public piece of ownership public transfer kind of what that looks like make sure it's done legally whether that's done as a city has to set up some kind of a you know a lease with the fire district so they can lease with what's been owned or something like that we just those are some of the pieces we're going to have to you know work through um Certainly modeling on the renewal side, we can help with some of the cash flows. But yeah, I mean, we're going to have to, as Rochelle said, there's going to be lots to kind of think about on each one of these pieces as we're transferring some of these things over.

Yeah. I'm on the art renewal committee.

I have thought about that. I need to work on some projections, depending on it. And I think I need to look at three things. And I haven't had a chance to do this yet, being very new to this position. And also with everything else I've undertaken over the last week or two, but One, I would like to give you a scenario if they were to stay within the Urban Renewal District and opt into it, and one if they don't. Regardless of whether they do or don't, though, the city's levy rate will go down in the year that they do move. So if they do move out and they stay in, we will still see a decrease in overall revenue. My first thoughts is that we'll be safe in maintaining the current TIF agreements because those are based, currently they're fairly low and they're gonna be based off of new increment coming in, which I think is gonna be enough to sustain the maximums we have on those, because they hit a max. But I think it will inhibit us from the ability to provide future TIF agreements, potentially, depending on those contracts and what they look like. Because it is going to reduce our operational increment revenue if they leave, regardless of whether they decide to stay in or not. So on that, to the urban renewal, and as the interim treasurer, I will Thank you.

Right now, I know that. Ray Linda this a little while back she started splitting out. Cost share for things like.

the city so i know that like fire fires budget right now has a cost share element to it correct for some of it that that's very complicated so you're referring to the cost allocation plan i guess um i don't currently believe and i looked at this i don't currently believe the city is charging them for um administrative services fire and police i think we kind of say you know They're getting, we want to give them as much of that general fund as we can. And so they, I think they have in the past paid some, but in trying to balance their budgets, it's been very difficult last couple of years. And so we have removed them from the admin of that allocation plan. There's several pieces to that plan though. I think they're still paying attorney's fees and Kelsey over here. She might be able to ascertain as to the other ones. I know that we have a lot. We have mowing of facilities, cleaning services from our facilities department. I think they're paying into some of that. I'd have to look specifically out how that cost allocation plan would be affected if they left, do some plug and play with the numbers. But, um, I think right now, admin allocation is 1 of the bigger pieces of that puzzle and so is the attorney services they are paying for piece of the attorney services. But I think we fork on the admin services to kind of help them, uh, you know, sustain and and. Meet the level of service that they have now.

Okay, so I was only asking in case they break off and they need to come back and say, okay, we need to. Borrow services until we can get ours up and running.

Right. What would that look like?

And is that in their current budget or is there is there a portion of that so that it's not as big of a hit or a smaller hit or a larger hit or that's I was just trying to think of.

Going forward, if that's something that's already kind of in their budget or not, I think it would be taken into consideration, but it would also be based off of what their needs are. If they said we need 100% of the services that you gave us, well, then it would be a straight. what were we providing for? And we're doing private, but if they go, Well, I think we can have our people do this. And can you guys just do that? And we have to start piecing that out, then the cost is going to look a little different. Any other questions? About anything that I stated? Hey,

You have a question for Chief Carpenter. When you made the transition from city to district, was this real quick? Sorry. Before we switch, Councilor Dunbar.

So I have a real quick question. I don't know whether or not Chief Carpenter wants to answer this or whether or not Rochelle wants to answer this. But you had mentioned when you transitioned into this that all of a sudden your captains and your chiefs were starting to do things like payroll, HR, and R&D.

Chiefs the ones that are sitting right there.

Yeah, so our operations chief basically became HR And so what was your reliant on the the current, you know administrative structure of the city of Manta post-separation?

So great question The year in between we stayed employees stayed with the city so that was really when we began to recognize We're only a year away From not having these support services anymore, and just just to give you a heads up, it was the most difficult 1, and it still continues to be somewhat difficult to work through because we were connected in so many places through our software. We're just now 3 years, 4 years later, getting cleaned up. So we relied on city services for 1 more year. And then within that year, we began building some capacity in our own team. So we hired a couple staff positions within. But we did rely on the city specifically until just recently for it. Um. Dance for mainly specifically in the impact fee. Area, like, managing and collection of impact these, we obviously are going to continue that contract with them as we. And then, obviously, the mayor's office. So, I interact with their legal, we obviously have our own legal, but we do bounce. Ideas off of both legal teams, so I'd say those are the 3 main services we used. Once once that 1st year was done, we no longer used HR. We didn't use parks for for long services. for like snow removal so we just pay the city now to do snow removal but we still have those connection points but mainly after that one year everything except for i.t was was now on our ownership and we would we still had great relationships so if i needed something from the park i would call the clerk and we would figure it out but the only things we paid for really were i.t services and then parks our snow movers

I have one more comment, if that's OK. And I don't know if there's a question in here, but there's definitely a comment. And so for everybody who's worked in government for a long period of time, I have great faith that people put their best foot forward when they're on a timeline. And I also believe that if we postpone things, we relax a little bit. And we may be in July of 2027 going, oh, there's so much to do, where how did you Did you feel you were under a timeline and did people work better under timelines?

Yeah, so what I'll do is I'll send you our annexation agreement. I'm not saying it's the right for you. It's just a model of what you can look at. We actually had a program through project. That 168 points that both the council and commission had come up with that needed to be completed within the year. And we just, and also, by the way, it was coven too. So, in that year, we had plenty of time to complete these tasks, but we were basically ran like a project management, someone over leading. We're all accountable to get 168 project points done within the year. But yeah, everybody from both teams specifically worked diligently to make sure that everything was done correctly. Everything from asset transfer, we also had some leases. So we had to work through the transfer of that ownership and who was going to pay and just the specific things that you have to think about, like PL liability was the main liability that came with us because we still owned that liability as a fire district from the city. So those are just some specifics, but they're all in that annexation. I'm happy to share it. It's a little long, I apologize, but we've tried to think of everything.

So, Chief, I have another question, if that's okay, and maybe, you know, Chief Tominski, you can answer it too. So in the process of the separation in this 168, you know, checklist of items, Who was the driving factor behind the completion of those 160

Most of the chiefs with support from some key specific city assistance. So we relied significantly on our on our CFO. City just in making sure we're doing everything correct. But it was almost all almost all work points were done by by the chiefs.

vision of the work that needs to be done between the district down the 70-30 split, 60-40, 80-20?

Most on the city was financing and legal, just making sure we're wrapping things up. And then obviously my interaction with the mayor's office. But the majority of the lift was on the chiefs to complete the work under the direction of the mayor and the council commission. How did it work to the finance department? And then that's where the mistake was made is we didn't realize the lift from IT. Like how to separate us from, mainly for security reasons, they didn't want us a part of their network. And so how did we do that when we're still living in one of their facilities? So that was the difficult part. We accomplished it. It was just like having preparation of memorandums of understanding prepared to understand. that separation occurs. I don't know if you guys have the same setup where, like our administration was in a city building that had infrastructure for IT in the basement. And so we had to go through their system to have our business run. That was the most difficult one, but I would say almost all the physical, not physical work, but the large lift was done by who's sitting there and then reporting back to their contact points at the state divisions.

Is that when the city of Nampa was using Tyler?

Yeah. And we were being dispatched by them too. That was another element, right? So we were in all of our, all of our storage was at dispatch. So we had two man hardware. Now we're not city employees. So our keys, we had to figure out how to, how are we going to, How are we going to reverse where you have a Napa fire employee coming into a high security area of the police department to get to our software or our hardware? So those were the things that might not be in the annexation agreement because we just never thought of it because it's just always been that way. Right.

I forgot I was going to mention earlier, too. I just I did get new construction values from the county. We are hitting our 8% this year as a city for the first time. It just goes into the way that we are going to be restricted as a city in our growth and our capacity because of House 389. And it's going to probably start hurting us that much more just now because we're hitting that 8%, which, again, just goes back to if they did leave, they would have more budget capacity because they have a higher limit now with new legislation.

Question for Chief Winslow. Yes, sir. Are you more excited about the discussion we're having or more scared with the discussion we're having?

It's like a new marriage. You're excited about getting married and at the same time you're scared about, okay, we've got kids to worry about, we've got a mortgage to worry about. It's just on a much larger scale. And so I think with the expertise in the room, there's a lot of opportunity to make this work on an appropriate time frame. And so encouraged would be more the term I would like to use. And personally, as a taxpayer, I think it's better for the taxpayer.

Thank you. I would definitely say just, you know, we have great examples of roadmap city in this room, we're able to arrange this meeting, very quick timeframe, have all key players and depending on council, commissions, direction, whatever you decide, be on the gas pedal, and we have great individuals ready. But that will turn back over. Just

Yeah, yeah, so we just basically took a shot of. What it was valued at at the moment we left the city. Total transparency that is some of the money we had to use for the gap that 90 day gap because our fire district didn't have large reserves. So, it did help us through a portion. I mean, not a lot of it, but it was what was used for the gaps. But, yeah, it was, it was right at 2.4Million. That was the only liability. that the city transferred funds for. So the leases we took with us. They were. We moved to VFIS.

Yeah.

That was half. So we were quoted at 180 through I-CRMP, and we came in at 84 or 88 initially. Some of our firefighters have hit a couple things, so our prices have gone up a little bit. But... We still enjoy a much lower insurance rate. Some of the things that, like, for the city benefits, if you, if you remember as well as the district. So, remember. When our annexation occurred, when we moved to the district, we then became 1 of the larger, we became the 2nd, largest district in the state. So the district's shared sales tax would go up proportionally for your size as a district, and the cities would stay the same. So the city did get some benefit from us leaving because they got to keep that revenue. That was one benefit, and the second benefit is. Just for the city of Nampa, everyone was at max capacity, all divisions. And so when we left, as you know, we were about 30 to 40% of HR's work, the fire department. Finance, I would say we're probably 20 to 30. So when we left, it didn't reduce the size of those divisions in the city. So they actually finally were like, okay, we're fully staffed and I have some capacity to do the work of the city. And then the third thing that I hear over and over again is the opportunity to never negotiate with the local again for the city. They were like, thank you. I'm just saying they're negotiating right now with the police and it's not going well. Um, just as you, as you are experiencing, the city of Napa is experiencing shorts. And when you have reading and voicing next door to the, that our members are comparing to. And we can't keep up because of our demographics and the way our taxes work. Fire district, we get to work with our local 1, like, we're 2 weeks out. We'll sit in a room. What used to take 3 to 6 months with the city takes 3 days, maybe less because we look at because it's our, it's our business. It's our, it's our, and we have no control over where the money is coming from. um so it just made it that much simpler for negotiations and it took that responsibility from the city which can be very stressful that's a that's a hard time every time you get in the room to negotiate against employees that you you are proud of and enjoy but you have to come to some conclusions so those were some of the three biggest positives i think for the city is some of some of that bandwidth came back to a or a really stretched out employee base There was some capacity because they kept the revenues, so they were able to give some needed raises at the time we left to other employees and then just the opportunity for for our relationship change to partners rather than parents and division of a city. So. I have a question for Kobe.

So I've been in fire negotiation with you for the last three months and I think that process has gone pretty smooth. So have you talked with your counterparts at Canyon County or the Nampa Fire District and how did they feel the transition went and what are your thoughts?

I've spoke to our cohorts in Nampa and their feedback was good. I've talked to, like, Matt Smith, and I've talked to Adam Swift, part of this. And I think a lot of it is to ensure that the planning is done properly, you know. The local stays integrated in that, right? I think to get the memberships buy off on how this looks is as long as the local is still partaking in the process. And we don't have to be shot callers by any means. But as long as we're included in the process, it helps with us being able to be transparent. Because typically it's not going to be everybody. It'll be like me and Eric in those meetings or in those talks. And we have to be able to relay that information back. Thank you. I do. I think the local felt great about what happened in Nampa. And I could be told one thing, and maybe Chief was told another thing.

But the guys that I talked to, it was, I won't lie, the first negotiation was really hard. Because of our sequence of events, our firefighters went without a contract for over a year. And so that first negotiation with us as a district was difficult, because we were trying to make up for almost two years of lost increase. And we were limited on funds. And so it's not easy to tell the people that work for you that there is no more. We can't do that. So the first one part after that it's been, I would describe it as we go in, we hang out for 3 days. We communicate really well, probably in similar experiences. Just it's just. As you said, the book isn't huge. It's it's just 5 pages of this is our, this is our, this is our finances and where, where is advantage and where do we need to make sure we're planning? Right? So.

Okay, since he did it, I'm going to put you on the spot. We sat and talked. Are you still in the same position you were at when we spoke when you had said, I'm going to put you on the record that. This was something that the union was looking at as a positive in that direction after hearing everything that's been going on. Is that still where the union you believe since it is.

support the administration in endeavoring this. You know, I've been upfront with the chief and it's, as Chief Carpenter has stated, we know that this transition is going to come with some financial constraints. And so we know we will have to work with the administration on ensuring that, you know, that the finances stay stable enough and as it grows, right. We do. We still fully support this motion.

Thank you. Thank you for being here today, by the way.

Of course. The next topic on the agenda is dealing with legal issues. Before we get to that, our commissioners, my other bosses, haven't said too much today. Is there anything?

i think we've been aware of the rumblings of this because i've been a commissioner pretty much just just the thought of that you know and never with much progress and i think as it's uh um moved along of course we kind of with bill 389 And, uh, how, with, uh, especially with our city council, you know, coming out strong with it. It's like, okay, possibility. I think, uh, I think our biggest concern. You know, we're a real district. We, we have a station and a couple of trucks and you provide some firefighters for it. And so. We haven't been used to moving at breakneck speed. We've always done things. We have, at least in the time I've been there, approached debt at all. We've always paid for it as we go. I think it's been a good thing for us. This will be a challenge for us, I think, as commissioners. But it's the way to go. West Canyon district. I think it better serve both the city and the small cities around us to be able to plan our strategic spots Firehouses and things I think will be increased and. The other thing is, is we might actually have an election. We are elected officials that have never been contested. So it's a lifetime commitment. And so, you know, just, on this side of the area. I don't think any of them knew we had a fire district until I became a fire commissioner and said, I'm a commissioner. I'm in your, I'm your district. We have that. Yeah. So I think that I would hope that the interest in just that this would create in the full district would you know, bring about, you know, maybe some eagerness to be a part of it from the community standpoint. And maybe even a little more interest. We haven't had anybody show up to, you know, from the community for a workshop at all, ever, either. And so I'm hoping that, you know, just the just the sight of this just the idea of this just the ramifications of this might i i think just having everybody out at the parades and stuff in these little communities all of that stuff has began to show that you know we have something going on out here and i think the ability for us to move into some of those communities with protection that will help their insurance rates, will help their, all of those things. I think there'll be greater understanding. I think it's a good thing to move forward. And of course, I think that the timeline is just, You know, we usually wait for 3 months for 1, 1 attorney's letter to get to the other journey, you know, it's just so, you know, there's things like that. I think just slow us down. But just to get, I think the build plan.

Look forward to working with all of them. Thank you commissioner, just quick clarification. You mentioned West Canyon. Well, I'm sorry you mentioned West Canyon is that would be the. Potential new name, or you just mentioned in that I'm just throwing it out there. All right.

Commissioners anything. I'm good, I mean, I'm excited about it. I think it could be a. great opportunity. The timeline scares me a little bit. You know, I want to make sure we're doing it right and not not just pushing it through to get it done in a hurry.

Just understand, live on a timeframe. Obviously, once again, will have counseled on the commissioners decision for a vote wouldn't be due By June 24, this is for us just more on the budget side, what it looks like going forward next year, still have several other dates to achieve, but whatever direction, you know, sooner or later, we'll still be on the gas pedal either way, because just like you mentioned, we don't want to relax and then have to speed up again. So whatever the two governing bodies want to do, you know, we're here to provide that will. But yeah, it is a lot.

Sorry, one more question, Chief. So, Chief Wendelsdorf and Chief Daniel, is there going to be an arm wrestling match to see who's the chief, or how are we going to decide which one of these great people are going to be the chief of this new West Canyon Fire District? We're used to using

I don't we've had a great partnership all along. I don't see any need for anything else in that. You have an excellent individual leading the helm of this organization and I don't know why there would be a need to change that. If I can be of assistance as this process continues on and whatnot. That's great. If not, then it's time for me to move on.

it was interesting i didn't know if napa rural did they have a mark yeah we kind of did we had uh uh chief davies oh that's right okay and he similar uh support role uh stayed with us for about a year and a half after uh just as a mentor making sure we were crossing the i uh t's and dot and i's but yeah he stayed and mentored us and then and then uh Realized he waited just a little bit too long to retire just because he was missing out on some fun, but yeah, he still comes and checks on us once in a while.

And that might be.

City of Caldwell and the district.

And basically knows where the bodies are buried. So we don't. Is that what you say? Yes. We're going to need his help through this transition on whatever our choice is here. Justin's been awfully quiet over there, and Oscar has too. Is there any legal stuff that we should consider, talk about?

largely we're going to be able to it's the policy decisions that will drive what the legal services will be and assistance and and just identifying how assets will be allocated and it's always it's always good to have excitement at the beginning but also have it well papered because it's it's when we're disagreeing that things become more important and contentious than we're all agreeing so we can settled out at the beginning as much as possible. And I apologize in advance for the three month letters between agencies and those sorts of things. But sometimes those are the things that happen. But I think we're going to be here in our office to support whatever the policy decisions are and what needs to be made with the deadlines.

Just following up on that too. We are currently good community partners. We will continue. Being good community partners, I mean, we're literally going to be right down the street. Some of those aspects, and, you know, if there's an improved fire service for the communities that we serve, it's a win for all. So we will work through it and we will maintain. great relationships, whatever that looks like in the next year or two years. And we love the fire department, whether they get to be a bigger district, we're still here. We're all going to exist and we'll help each other out the best we can.

One of the things I wanted to hear from, cause I haven't yet. Rules finance, is there anything that you guys are concerned about from your end of taking over? I mean, is there issues that you can think of or things that maybe we want to think of before this all happens? A financial issue on Caldwell Rules District.

I don't know. It'll it'll be a lot, you know, because we do very little with finance, you know, because we pay the city. So, in the transition, we'll just have to work it through.

You're the one that cuts the checks. I am. I think I've talked to you before.

Yes, a few times.

Yeah, I just want to make sure there wasn't any major concerns or anything that you saw that might be roadblocks or issues or anything.

I don't think there's any, you know, roadblocks or anything. It'll be a transition. Of course. There's a lot more to offer once we get all that done compared to what I do right now.

Okay.

Chief, I don't want to make this sound bad, but my desire at the end of this is that there's complete separation and no responsibility or liability between the two. Did that happen with the input?

It has other than, um, the things I spoke about earlier, we still live on a piece of property at our training grounds that's owned by the city. And it's under a use agreement, so they don't charge us for the use of that ground. But it is their intent to take that property someday. So other than that, I mean, I'm sure there's from legal. I'm sure there's some liability on the city for us being on their property. However, we've signed agreements that there are buildings are our responsibility, our maintenance on a day-to-day situation.

The city does their thing. You do your thing. Other than those, those small things I consider small and I think complete separation.

Yeah, I think as as mayor stated, they include me in all communications and it's really up to me if I want to join them and vice versa. There's no commitment, but our intent is to stay connected as partners. But they're there. They have no responsibility for us as a fire department anymore.

The last 2 items on the agenda, or the last few items really revolve around what do we do next? And again, they were just discussion points or to spark up some conversation or provoke some thought about council and commissions direction to. Obviously, I think there's a lot of information that's been floated around this room. You've got the technical experts, Chief Dominski and Chief Carpenter in the room, as well as Mike and our own finance and legal team. I don't think we can get a much better assembly than what we have today to at least give us some direction on what happens next. Again, not asking for that answer right now. I see there's some time constraints to some of these solutions or some of these proposals. And we are ready to continue or look at other avenues. And I think that's the bigger conversation right now. So asking for a little.

As you heard Chief Carpenter testify to or speak to, the fire service was probably 80% of the driver. and getting that 168-page item checklist and things. Would that be your team's idea as well, that you guys would be the driver on that?

I would assume so, with close collaboration with the rural commissioners and Chief Wendelsdorf. That's that's of course, if they're up for it, because our commissioners are 50% of this equation. This is a, this is a true partnership and. As much as the city may want to. Surrender the city fire department, they have to agree to absorb it or annex into it. And so. It's kind of a 2 pronged approach.

I think there's a lot of information here that the commissioners and council have been exposed to today. We have a commissioner's meeting on Tuesday. So I think for almost a week from now, uh, for them to have some time to think about, uh, the following Monday, the council would have a meeting for them to think about it. And this is our direction.

No, I don't really have a follow-up, except, yeah, I think for this to move forward, we just need to have somebody say, we've got the ball, we're going to take it, to identify what we need to do.

Mayor and Council and Chief, we're doing this right now with CUNY. I understand it's a consolidation. My suggestion after we basically did what you're doing here today with both commissions, both elected boards approved staff to move forward with a consultant and come up with the data that you're looking for basically they just said you have approval to spend up a certain amount of money to hire the consultant for consolidation agreement or the annexation agreement in this in this sentence is what it would look like you're not you're not deciding anything he's doing the work for the two elected bodies to consume and to have in front of them so we were approved for the consolidation agreement mapping And what the new district would look like, and then the third one was legal's review of the consolidation agreement, and then also public input. So they approved a budget amount to go no further, and then allowed us to go out and do the work that was requested. But I think. That was their goal is to just get as much information as they can. And in this instance, it wouldn't you need a consultant to tell you what an annexation would look like for you. Um, and is, I think, knowing what Greg is, or chief is working on right now is it better next January when or February when we have the opportunity to go to the capital and get that fixed. Um, is there opportunity now before before that occurs? I don't know if your staff wants to take the liability of saying yes or no to that, but rather just a lot of 3rd party that does it. Separately, but that might be my advice, because that's what I'm doing right now. Uh, at the box we're having with human. Ask what what budget did they approve for you? Uh, 80,000 dollars. It's not going to be that much now. We were told the mapping was very expensive based on I know I was talking to someone about Ketchum, the Wood River Valley. Someone had reported to us that that consultant just for the map was between 30 and 50,000, and that's not true. So what we know is the most expensive piece will be the consultant. Basically, like, galena consulting act now tissue or vice, that would be the most expensive piece. I would expect that probably between 30 and 50 map is around 18 and then whatever legal. Legals decide would be the annexation agreement costs. Just so happens does white Peterson represent 1 of the agencies. So happens that's who wrote our annexation agreement. So they already have a copy. So hopefully that would save you some money.

Chief, the direction of the council and the commissioners, do you feel you're ready for this?

On top of everything else that's happening. What I would like to do is prepare a little summary, a report, a request to council after the commissioners meeting next Tuesday. Maybe for consideration at the next council meeting to either move forward with. Continued research to a fire district or alternatively, a pursuit of a public safety levy. I know that's going to be a short time frame, but I think by then we'll have at least an idea on what to ask for from council.

Great. Lynn had come up with a. Scary option, but she had mentioned very. Possible using 1 time. fire through until this could happen. That would be something that the commissioners on the other side would need to look at because that's not your decision. That would be hopefully consolidate annex. That could get through. From our standpoint, I'm looking at budgets are coming up really, really fast. We've got to decide how we want to deal with that for next year. Do we want to do at one time do we want to do it continue? So it's almost one of these where I think we need to kind of That's our to me. That's my concern right now is what am I doing here the next couple of weeks? Month try to get budget out What's your thoughts on? Doing the more risky situation and going ahead and doing it that way, do you think that the commissioners or would you be willing to speak with them and see if that's something that they would be willing to pull the trigger on within maybe by the end of this year or next year, depending on how you want to work with the state or take that risk of having that 10% follow you? Is that something you'd be willing to do? I mean, I'm trying to figure out our budget. That's my concern right now. Right.

I have to keep those people in station for. Use this year's budget formula. we start our first year as a fire district well behind what we need to occupy station four. And so you mentioned risk with one-time funding where the city would support the new fire district as an exit. What happens at year two? Does the city have the money to continue to support the new fire district or is it just on your own? And then we're faced with a similar scenario that the city may be faced with as far as production services or layoffs. But as a city, you can reduce other programs. It's a fire district. The only way to reduce programs is to reduce people.

and thank you chief thank you uh mayor i left my card uh for you and rochelle and then obviously if you guys need anything i'm available at any time for the district or the city we got a budget thing today too thank you thank you very much i gotta go get a budget approval so i appreciate that hey no thank you for the opportunity um can i just weigh in a little on this um i want you guys to remember that the city is already at risk

even without making any changes to the budget, which I haven't done anything since Ray Lynn has talked to you guys last since the last budget council. But right now, our public safety is, you know, does not have the the operational revenue to sustain operations. So they are being sustained mostly from investment revenue that comes in, which we don't really budget anything for, but we are getting significant amount because we do invest those funds, but that's not good budget practice. And so we're trying as a city to go into good budget practice and say, we want to, just as others have mentioned here before, You want to use that. They don't use sales tax to budget positions because it's volatile. You don't want to use volatile revenue to budget positions because positions are people. And you don't want to fire people. And so it's a sensitive situation to be in when, you know, on actuals, we're coming out okay. But budget-wise, we've got some thinking that we need to go through. And whether fire makes this transition or not, the city is already in a deficit. And so we're already laying that risk. We have been since last year. And the urgency, I think that having them move out sooner rather than later will potentially save the city money. When it comes to future negotiation, how it's gonna play out is if the fire district goes sooner, we will have more one-time money to use to help them with the transition. The longer we wait as a city, the more we're gonna be using one-time funds for operations to sustain operations, the less we will have to assist in the transition. So even though legislatively you might be able to build some additional revenue through property tax funding if we which sounds like it's gonna happen, which is great. But regardless of whether or not that happens, you may have additional revenue coming in there, but the city will not have additional support to give you because we now have used that to maintain you for one more year in operations. So that's how it would play out. Either way, I think if we do it now, because the city's not going to come up with more one-time revenue we are last year i think we we had an increase of 500 000 in our general fund that's not a lot of money so we're basically breaking even we don't have we're not building any excess right now so one time is one time We're not saying let's build this reserve for what we have later. If you guys move now, we will have more money to support you in that transition through one-time funding. If you wait another year, well, now that's $2 million that's coming out of that one-time funding to sustain you for 2028. That's going to come out of maybe the $5 million we have now, so now we only have three. Because my assumption is that even though we're projecting you to go negative, we will have additional revenue come in for investments that still puts us at breaking even we're not going to have any excess and and and just as they've mentioned being with the city that one-time revenue it has to be shared so we have a lot of asks from council and community members on how to use that one-time funding so i just feel like that needs to be taken into consideration If you get additional property tax money, because of this transition, and you wait, there's potential the city will not have the 1 time revenue to help transition. So maybe you'll watch. Does that mean we can take our time? Maybe because then we'll just give you less because you're going to get more in property tax and if you guys are okay with that, right? If you want that to come from the city. And then, you know. And it's going to come from the city if you make if you make the choice to move now, it's going to come from the city. Whereas, if you make the choice. Either way, it's going to you, right? Whether in operations or transition funding, it's, it's, it's kind of. It's got to go to you because of where you are standing in your budget decision, but just just to have some. You know, have that in life as you move forward and making that timing decision.

Council. Either way, Mr. Mayor, this needs to be on the radar for our next City Council meeting on July 20th. So let's put that bookmark in there. I think Rochelle is correct. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is today. to start moving more expeditiously and cautiously.

Thank you, Councillor Dittenberg. Anything else from council?

Chief? Mayor, just one thing that I haven't heard mentioned here is that once the annexation occurs, boundaries are set. And I just want to bring that up. So as the city, if the city continues to grow out of those boundaries, they grow into another fire district. So as you continue to grow south, you would grow into the Napa fire district. As you continue to grow east and north, you go into the middle mid star fire district. Just want to make sure that's on the table. Excuse me. So everybody, everybody.

Question of the fire of people who've done this. Is it common for fire districts to annex in or do you usually stay stagnant in your boundaries?

If there's unincorporated areas, like in Star, there's unincorporated in the county. They're forced to annex it. It can't develop with viability. There's only a few places in Canyon County that. South. I think everything is what Chief Wendelsdorf was talking about is a city that takes property from the fire district. Yes, fire district can't take property from a fire district. So. It was a transition that the city of Napa just realized with us, they have now started annexing. To the star fire district that sent all of the documentation. and the amplifier transferred it to... This is how we've always done it. There, and then you're in a new fire industry. Have to deal with, after they understood it, there's no issue. is is portions that are that you will grow into Napa Rural Fire District or Middleton Rural Fire District have some sort of a relationship with us on development not the end of the world all those fire marshals there pieces that whole development that I did the whole plan review on went through City Council and star with and then realized it was in the Meridian Fire District didn't even realize that brings up another question for you chief this developing now the fees that fire department charges you have your public safety

transition to take that.

An example from the amplifier when they transition the fire prevention division with Nampa. It's funded by fees through building permit fees or inspection fees, etc. So they maintain those positions and they have a contract or an agreement with the city of Nampa. To offset some of those costs in the fire prevention division, so that would be a separate agreement. I believe with the city of Caldwell to maintain that. Within the buildings.

Okay, so when we look at the. The county releasing ground into the city for annexation. Your point is that we have to be a little careful with that relative to the boundaries come into another district.

No, sir. I just want you to be aware. So, for example, let me just give you a real example right now. The city of Middleton was protected by the Middleton fire district. For a very long period of time. Then they annexed south of the river and annexed the city of Middleton into our fire district. So if it's anything south of the river, they have to come to us or we respond to them. If it's anything north of the river, MidStar responds. I just wanted you to be aware of that from time to time when you're doing an annexation or a build of some kind and they come in and you say, did you talk to the Caldwell Rural Fire District? Well, no, we're in the Middleton Fire District or no, we're in the Napa Fire District and here's their letter. Now, we all work together, we work together on a regular basis, so I don't see much of a change there we're trying to put everything on the table so everybody's making an educated choice decision whatever you'd like to call it and i just wanted to make sure everybody was aware of that once the boundaries are set they're set they don't change so so the boundaries you're referring to are going to include the call the city of caldwell correct go beyond that as well Well, no, what would happen is, is you would take the Coldwell Rural Fire District boundaries that we have right now, that map that I had up there. Yeah. Whatever you've annexed between now and the time we pull the pin and throw the grenade in, once those boundaries are set, That's it. Now, when you annex south of here out by Lone Star or something along those lines, you would be annexing into the Napa Fire District and that area, that square mile or whatever you've annexed into the city would be serviced by the Napa Fire District while the rest of the city is being taken care of by the Caldwell Fire District.

at all, no confusion there.

No, because right now under Chief Daniels, the closest unit is going. And so using GPS units and tracking of vehicles and everything else, there could be another unit from neither one of those departments passing close by. And they're the ones that are going to be dispatched to it to make sure. Because in reality, when somebody calls 911, they just want to see big red show up. They don't care what's on the door.

They don't care what the patch is. Okay, so the rule of thumb is whoever's closest, no matter what district you're in, they still attack that fire.

Yes. Well, you'll see the differences when it comes to fire prevention.

Whoever's closest and available. Yes. And what about the cost incurred with that? I mean, do you guys trade costs between fire districts then, or how does that work?

No. We just work what's in the best interest of the public. Because I may come in one time to your district, and two weeks later, you're coming into my district.

Well, I'm just saying, with all the calls that call will get, uh, relative to the outskirts of our city district. Uh, you know, are the cost the cost off to be more for us. Versus apartment or a notice or any place else is what I understand.

No, we consider that mutually. Okay. And so we just help each other out. I don't want to I don't know if the police chief is still in here. It's no different than law enforcement seeing something happen, but they're out of. theoretically over the border. They're still going to do their law enforcement activities and take care of it without charging anybody a fee, Caldwell City a fee or Caldwell Fire District a fee.

But if you understand that if Caldwell has 10 calls and you have one call, how is that extra money made up? See, that's what I'm confused about.

Are you referring to currently or if we were to go to the district?

No, when we go with Zach Brown. It's all, it's one, I believe, right? It's just only one, so.

sorry counselor static did that answer i think i just want to make sure rochelle's comfortable with that i think i understand i'm commissioner boundaries and stuff so i think think of it this way one size fits all so so the other half of the equation you're talking about chief is that um if we would annex that subdivision that was across the boundary Those people would be paying property tax to the city of Caldwell and fire levy to whatever district they belong to.

Just like when we annex in the city, living where I live in the city, I will then be paying a fire district tax and a city of Caldwell tax.

Mr. Mayor. Yes, sir. Mayor and Council, so I just got my first set of plans, so I do all the plan reviews for Caldwell. the developments in the city. And we just got the first example of this situation about a month ago. Conger Group is developing a subdivision out off of 2026 that is in the city of Caldwell, but it's in Napa's Fire District. So I sent them the plans and said, this is in your district. You'll need to supply comments back to the city for the development. so it's already happening we're that was the first one that has come across my desk so it's going on now then my question becomes it came up this is more for rochelle too just for her knowledge right now we charge

We charge, right? For fire prevention. Yes. Are we going to have to now in. Enter into agreements with Middleton and Nampa and everybody else for whoever we end up annexing into, because we're going to have to charge them the fees now as well, or we're going to have to send those fees to them. Correct?

we already do we already get fees from because we we already help the other jurisdictions so we have a section of middleton it's in middleton city that we collect fees from same with canyon county um collects fees for us as well

Okay, so, like I said, we, if those kinds of agreements as a city, we may have to enter into those agreements with each district to make sure that we're. Once you guys jump district, and I'm doing it for us that we are collecting those fees from all those. Yes, correct. A little bit more work.

Well, we're already doing it, but she said for the count, but yes, it's already done. There would be other entities and other right now. I think it's.

process yeah so we want to take a quick break and then come back and finish up or go ahead and do we have anything else for today you want to say thank you to to the staff that helped set all this up everything in a good productive conversation. Obviously, we should have some direction from our governing bodies soon. And look forward to whatever the future brings.

And chief if you want to for Mr. Mayor, was the council want to go into an executive session at all? Yes.

Well, thank you to our guests for coming. And thank you to those in the audience. We did cover a lot of things. And again, staying with the mantra that we don't reduce services, we don't harm our community, and we don't harm our staff. That's where I believe my responsibility lies as well as the command staff. Chief Wendelsdorf and the rural commissioners and the city council. I believe that's where all of our hearts are right now. Rushing this scares me. It terrifies me. It's risky. But I think if we set it up correctly, we will be successful. Vision, again, when we started this conversation was 2028 was the objective. It still may very well be that with plans to start this right now. We will have the resources committed to making this happen. We can shift our administrative focus. I think on the bigger picture for the organization, or for both organizations, we will absolutely need support. We may need some additional funding for consultants to assist us with this journey because this is new. not just to most people in the room um but throughout the state of idaho and we're relying on some legislative changes that may or may not come to even make us more successful and so that may require some enhanced participation at the state house um and lobbying some of those legislature legislators to to make some changes so That being said, expect a small presentation from the fire department on the 20th, asking for that direction or a continuance thereof. And again, I just want to say thank you to everybody in the room, our commissioners, Chief Wendelsdorf, Deborah, thank you to city staff and the Caldwell Fire Department. And lastly, our mayor and council for facilitating this conversation.

Do you guys need to close out real quick, or you?

Okay.

Mr. Mayor, since this is a public meeting of the call of the city council member, I make a motion that we bring to executive session pursuant to Code 6206, identifying one or more of the specific paragraphs specifically identified in Section B to commence at 1.30 p.m.

Yes. All right.

We are.