City Council - Regular Meeting

Council, we'll call this meeting to order. For the record, it is Tuesday, March 24th, 2026 at 6 p.m. We'll begin tonight's record city council meeting with roll call attendance. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Councilman Cavender, here. Councilman Taylor here. Councilwoman Strader, here. You try one more time. Councilwoman Strader here. Councilman Whitlock here. Councilwoman Little Roberts here. Councilman Overton here. Mayor Simpson here. Next time is the pledge of allegiance. If the doll, please rise and join the pledge.

Aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Our next item up is our committee invocation which tonight will be delivered by Randy Hunter. If you'd all please join us in the community invocation or take this as a moment of silent reflection. No, we have not. Yeah,

since this is the first time uh uh this uh body has met since the passing of uh Mayor Hogab from Nampa, it's probably only fitting that we take a few moments of uh quiet reflection. If you want to pray, you can pray. If you want to remember him and his family, you can do that. But just a moment for them. It's a reminder for all of us, isn't it? Even someone as August as a mayor can't uh stick around forever. But uh good that we remember his family and the work that he did. You did. Uh so this is the first time you've met since uh St. Patrick's Day, right? That was Did you meet on St. Patrick's Day? You did. Oh my. That's commitment. You know, a lot of people think of St. Patrick's Day as nothing more than leprechauns and green things hanging everywhere and bar specials and and that kind of thing. And I I guess I'm not opposed to any of those kinds of things, but that's not really what St. Patrick was all about. Uh St. Patrick was not even Irish. His name was Maywin Sukat. He was British. He uh was a young man when he was kidnapped from the shores of England by Irish slave traders. Druids took him to Ireland where uh he lived as a slave feeding pigs and hurting sheep. And after about six years, he managed to find a way to escape on a ship and went back to England, vowing he'd never go back to Ireland again. But um Patrick uh became a Christian and he wanted nothing more than to help the people who had hurt him, which is very odd, but it's what Jesus did for his for us, so it

maybe makes sense. He went back to Ireland and decided he would be a missionary to the Irish people, which he was. It was not easy because the druids sac their their religion involved human sacrifice and they did not like what he was teaching and the like. So he was on the run for his life much of the time in in Ireland but nevertheless he stuck with it and um um but where was I in the story? He's back in Ireland after being did I yeah I said he was kidnapped right so he was kidnapped uh taken to Ireland. He escapes on the boat, goes back to to England where he has this episode where he wants to go back to Ireland, gets back to Ireland, he's terribly persecuted, but it doesn't dissuade him at all from what he went went there to do. So, um, he started monasteries in Ireland and those monasteries, he had a he had a brilliant outreach plan. Those monasteries would grow to a certain point and then they'd split off and go start more. And that kind of um expansion spread throughout Ireland. But uh that wasn't enough for him. So he also started sending those monasteries and missionaries out uh back to England. So and to Scotland and then finally to the mainland to Europe. In fact um my descendants is from Germany. So um I'm here probably as a result of what um Maywin Sukat or Patrick did. Um, it's not bad to celebrate St. Patrick's Day in another way, but it's not bad also to remember what he did, how he organized people, how he sent them out to do good, how his work was rewarded and u still is affecting people today. There's a there's a it's a prayer really

a prayer of protection that is credited to St. Patrick. Um, I have a copy of it here. I'm going to read just a part of it. This it's not long. It's it's tiny print, so it's it's long, but I'm just going to read the bottom part of this prayer. And it's a prayer for his protection after all he'd gone through. Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ where I lie, Christ where I sit, Christ where I arise, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me. Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me. Christ in the eye of every eye of every man that sees me. and Christ in every ear that hears me. Well, it's a beautiful prayer for the Lord to guide and protect and bless us. Uh our prayer and hope for you is that the Lord provides and protects through you. That what you're doing here makes a difference in the lives of people um in a very positive and a very good way. So, what you're doing, you're not St. Patrick's St. Petrice, but what you're doing is very much like what he did. So, God bless you as you do it. I'd like to give each one of you one of these cards of St. Patrick's Prayer. Thank you, Mr. I appreciate it. With that, we will move on to adoption of our agenda.

Mr. Mayor, Councilman Overton, there are no changes to tonight's agenda. I move that we adopt the agenda as published. Second. Have a motion, a second to adopt the agenda as published. Is there any discussion? If not, all in favor signify by saying I. I. I.

Those nay. The eyes have it. And the agenda is agreed to. Next up, we will do a proclamation for procurement month. Um, if we could have Sandra and Keith join us at the podium. So council, this has become an annual tradition. Um, but when you have uh the best of the best in the state, it's easy to get up and celebrate uh each year on the good work of procurement professionals um here in the city of Meridian. So with that uh we'll go ahead and read this proclamation and Keith I will turn the mic over to you for any additional comments. Whereas public procurement is essential function of the city of Meridian providing for the purchase of goods and services for the safe and effective operations of the city. And whereas the city of Meridian is supported by highly qualified procurement professionals who demonstrate professionalism on all levels and who dedicate themselves to providing the best value for every taxpayer dollar. And whereas the city of Meridian procurement division requires specific knowledge and skills to maintain fair and ethical practices and successful negotiations for the mutual benefit of the city and supplier. And whereas the city of Meridian procurement division is a proud member of the IDO public purchasing association which is committed to providing highc caliber strategic logistical and operational support for all agencies associated with the chapter. And whereas the procurement division and the city of Meridian recognize supports and practices the five public procurement values and

guiding principles of accountability, ethics, impartiality, professionalism, service, and transparency established by the National Institute for Public Procurement. Therefore, I, Mayor Roberty Simmonson, hereby proclaim March 2026 as procurement month in the city of Meridian and urge the residents of our community to join IPA and NIGP in recognizing the role of the procurement professional within the business, industry, and government. That is 24th day of March 2026. So Keith Sandra on behalf of uh mayor council we want to present this proclamation to you and say thank you for all you do and all not just for the city of Mian but in the state of Idaho on this topic. Thank you.

I uh I would like to see if Sandra has a few words if she'd like to share. If not, I have a few things, but Well, thank you, um, mayor and council members and also citizens of Meridian. It is a pleasure and an honor to stand before you all, to do this every day. It's it's just a blessing, honestly, to serve the community here in Meridian and give our best every single day. So, thank you all. We appreciate it.

Yeah. And I just want to reiterate reiterate that we get great support from you mayor and and city council. So we're we're very blessed to be in the position that we are to have support from our leaders and it gives us the ability to go out and and do well not just for the city of Meridian but try to help out with the state as well. And I just want to thank uh you and the departments throughout the city. They're also very generous and gracious to work with us and let us do our jobs properly. And uh we want to thank our customers as well. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Normally it's our police, fire, and parks, which are the best of the best, but who knew it was all because of our talented purchasing professionals.

Okay. With that, we'll move on to the consent agenda. Mr. Mayor, Councilman Overton, there are no changes to tonight's consent agenda. I move that we approve the consent agenda for the mayor to sign and the clerk to attest. Second. Have a motion, a second to approve the consent agenda. Is there any discussion? If not, all in favor signify by saying I. I. I. You guys have it. And the consent agenda is agreed to. There were no items moved from the consent agenda. So, we'll move on to uh any announcements and recognition from council. Okay. Mr. Kirk, anyone signed up under public forum? Mr. Mayor, nobody signed up.

No one signed up under public forum. Okay, then we will move right on into our department reports for this evening. Uh, first item is up is 24, which is the commercial property assess capital expenditure or CPACE program. Uh, invite up Curtis CER for continuation of this discussion. Good. Good evening everyone. Nice to be here again. Third time's a charm probably hopefully. Um on January 20th, that's the last time we met. Um and we had some subject matter experts on CPACE uh here to answer some of the technical questions about uh what we were proposing. Um at the conclusion of that meeting and uh over the course of several weeks, I assembled a draft document that's before you tonight. So

Curtis, if you can make sure you get into the mic. Okay. Um, so the document that's in that's in the packet um is the result of several weeks off and on of assembling this based on a template that was available through uh the the law firm that was uh at the meeting as well as looking at the other CPACE programs that have been approved throughout the state. So, this is specific to Meridian. Uh has been reviewed by the city attorney's office and is essentially complete with a few blanks that need to be filled in. Um so, uh some of the feedback uh received during the January 20th meeting pertained to the proposed fee structure. Uh in the current draft, I uh stuck with the statutory maximums uh which is a $500 application fee and a 1% loan service fee with a maximum amount of 50,000. And uh while I don't envision the CPACE program would ever become a revenue generator of any consequence for the city, uh any of those fees generated could offset all or some of the cost to administer the program, whether it was done internally or whether we contracted it out. Um the language in the in the current document does allow the option to contract this out. Um, also based on my last visit to the council, there was discussion as to how a CPACE program would be would be received by the development community. Um, for example, would we go to the trouble of establishing a program uh and no one would use it? Um, or could it be perceived that we were establishing the program for one or two projects only? Um, while those are valid concerns, um, they're kind of they're hypothetical in nature. So, uh, one of the things I had had done is reached out to, uh, the one CPACE project that's actually been

funded in the state of Idaho and reached out to that developer to get their feedback. And so, uh, Ryan Nelson, who's the founder and CEO of Sweetwater Companies, are a development company, uh, based in Phoenix, Arizona. They're the developer of the Madison Station multifamily project in Rexburg, Idaho. um him and his team uh worked with the city of Rexburg to develop their CPACE program because it was early on after the legislature passed the um law and uh they closed on a $15 million CPACE package in early 2025. Uh they were the first CPACE loan closed in the state of Idaho and to their knowledge are the only one that's actually closed on a loan. Um but additionally and probably most importantly, Mr. Nelson stated that if it had not been for the CPACE funding, phase two of that project would not have moved forward. It was that close. It was the difference in the the interest costs. And so that brought an additional 200 plus units of multifamily housing to uh Rexburg, which is currently under construction right now. So, uh, in closing, uh, if the council wishes to advance, uh, the CPACE program, uh, we would need to bring back the resolution of intent. There's a draft in here for you to look at. Um, but we could bring that back as early as April 7th, and then we could set the required public hearing for either April 21st or 28th and then adopt the resolution establishing the program at that that same meeting. So, uh, with that, I'm happy to answer any questions you might have about the document or anything else related to the CPACE program.

Right. Thank you, Curtis. And council, if I could just uh add on to one component, you know, because some of this conversation was around do we contract out with somebody or um do it internally? And in my conversation with Curtis, you know, the basic question is if an application, if we started this program, an application came in tomorrow, is there anything in your current work portfolio that would prevent you from being able to execute that in the in its current term that would be delayed? while he's got some projects that are there. We we felt like the best way to start this is to leave not do a contract have an internal help understand what the true impacts and ways of doing it are. um you know the economic development is one of those things where sometimes they have something tangible output and uh if it's a part of a cost recovery plan for the uh position that's great but since we don't know if or when it will be utilized even sometimes when you set up a contract with somebody and they don't have get any work from you um it's not necessarily always the best outcome either. So until we until we at least get one in and see what the workload uh expectations that that would be at least my recommendation to you is to have it remain as an internal process and then Curtis can value proposition after if we get any and he does does one if we need to look to outsource that to somebody. So that would at least be my recommendation uh if we move this forward at this time. Mr. Mayor, Councilman Taylor. So,

I'll just kind of chime in on on that a little bit. Um, that was probably the the thing that I left uh from our last conversation was um I would prefer I wanted to make sure that the developers are paying for the administrative costs of that. Which is why it would lead me to say let's contract it out. But I I think you make a valid point. we don't know how much time is going to be used and there's probably some value in Curtis, you know, spending time like making sure that the program is set up the way it it should be set up and so just as long as the fees are kind of repaying for the time for Curtis to do that, I probably am okay with that and probably makes some sense to to keep it in house. But for me, that was important that um there was no it, you know, cost passed along to the city to do this work for developers. So, as long as they're paying for that, whether it was if it was a contracted out, that would be easier to say, well, you're going to pay for that. If we're going to do that in-house, I just want to make sure that we're being paid for the work that we're doing. So, yep. Mr. Mayor, if I may, just one quick question for Curtis. Yes.

Um, just remind me, and again, I think we talked about it, but my memory is full of a lot of stuff, so I I might have just forgot the detail without looking at my notes. Um the the Rexburg project was a multif family project but the CPACE program is not can be used for any variety of commercial projects right but it's not just for multif family. Yeah that that that's correct they are when you research it there's a lot of multifamily that's used um but it's not specific to multifamily. It can be for industrial can be for um you know even agricultural in the statute allows for that. So and just general commercial office.

Yeah, correct. Anything commercial that that's where multif family and general commercial is where we anticipate uh the the likelihood of someone utilizing this. Mr. Mayor, Councilman Overton, just a couple of comments. Curtis, thank you for coming back three times to help us understand how this process works because I think it I think we've come to understand it a lot better and truly understand that what this creates is kind of a a unique funding opportunity that's not for everybody, but it is for some. Yeah.

And the fact that you've kind of solved the one big question that we all had that Councilman Taylor brought up, which is we don't want to bring on a new program that puts the burden or costs on our taxpayers. We want to make sure that there's a cost recovery written into it. And it sounds like we've got that handled. So, I think you've you've answered all the questions. You've taken care of the the cost model so that we know that it's going to be handled and it won't be at the expense of the city or taxpayers. and uh I hopefully we'll find a good applicant that this will work for and we'll get to see it come to fruition in the future. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Council L Roberts. Mr. Mayor Curtis, thank you very much for all the work that you've put into this. as you've been kind of studying it and putting it together, have you seen projects like what's like maybe the smallest project you've seen or things like that that we might have a variety? I guess we're just where there's only one in Idaho. I guess I'm just so focused on we're looking at a $15 million project potentially.

Yeah, that that's a great question. And I have researched it in other states and looked at some of these capital providers and what types of projects they financed. And I'd say on on the largest side, I've seen projects upwards of $65 million. That would be something very large. Um something that's more typical is a $3 to5 million project. Um so not even as big as the Rexburg. There seems to be a lot of uh projects in that range. And there appears to be some mechanism at least in some states. I don't know if it would apply in Idaho where people have refinanced projects. So again, not sure if that's allowable in Idaho, but in other states that seems to be something they're using it for.

Thank you. Just would like to say that in my years in economic development, I mean, this seems to make sense. I was kind of a little hesitant probably at first because it's a a different realm of incentive if you would be and so but it's typical to put your incentive packages together before you have someone. So I think the city being ready for it with you at the helm and looking at outsourcing it if and when that needs to happen is the right way to go. So I'm very supportive of where we are now to continue with it. Thank you, Councilwoman Shader.

Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Thanks, Curtis. I appreciate you providing the information. Um, I think with this, I'm looking at it kind of like a pilot program. I'm a little bit skeptical. I'm I'm concerned we're going to put a lot of work into something that's not going to return a lot of applicants. But, I'm open to trying it since you say you have the capacity to work on it. Um, I would just be very hesitant to put any additional resources, whether it's time or money or headcount into this program unless it's really being utilized and we can see that it's paying for itself. Uh, similar to Councilman Taylor's concerns. So, um, you got kind of a cautious orange light for me. Go for it from my perspective. Just, um, please keep track of how much time and effort you're spending and we'll make sure that it's, you know, Thank you.

And I think it just to I think we're we're done with the investment in the program creation except for maybe putting up on our website. I think really that's a you know, however we communicate this out. Um we're we're at the done part until we get our first application. Um so no more resource allocation necessary unless we get a application then we'll find out what that looks like.

Yeah. And Mr. Mayor, that's correct. I think all the heavy lifting is done. I think most of the the remainder uh to make it official is up to the council and adopting a resolution and holding a public hearing and saying the pro program's active and then we put it up on our website and we uh have it available for uh developers or uh contractors to at least look at, research, see if it's a program they'd be interested in. And it's a great tool to have, but it's just one of many tools in a toolbox or in our case in Idaho, one of the few tools in a toolbox as I was informed earlier this today by Curtis that even some of the tools the state has done in the past maybe not even there because of the current budget situation. So, uh, any tool may be important to development looking at Idaho. Okay. Well, council with that we will bring this back uh with the appropriate next steps with legal and you'll see this in the coming weeks or month. Good. Thank you.

All right. Okay. Next item up is item 25, standard operating policy discussion. Mr. Narian.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. Uh what you have before you is a proposed policy. Um, that actually is probably one of the most common questions my office gets from a department is who can sign it and then where does it go? And so we've all we've been doing these for years. All of this practice has been done basically through repetition and all of the departments have followed policies that have been in place uh informally by finance and through this council in the past and the mayor's office in the past. And so it's always been done pretty routinely, but it's never been codified or collected into a a written policy. Uh clearly so all departments can simply look at it, look at a table, look at where it would go, where does it sign, and then and that avoids a phone call to say, does the mayor have to sign this or not? Does it have to go to council or not? Where does it go? So I had Ally from our team work with all the departments and finance and procurement to basically take the existing practices we've been doing and put it all to a policy format so it was clearer create a table that you have attached as part of the procedures so that again hopefully departments in the future when they call and say who has to sign it we can say did you look at the policy look at the procedure it's in the table this is where it goes again a majority of the things that are on there are things that should be familiar to all of you things that you see normally is part of council's normal business of agreements, joint powers, leases, easements, such as that. Most of the other things that you should see on the table are things that are probably approved. Many of them are approved to the council level either through the budgeting process or some other form. And then this is just the mechanism to carry out the purchase of equipment or whatever else is necessary that doesn't require a council level signature or approval. secondarily because the budget's already been done. So that was the intent here was simply to capture the existing practice and we've ran it through all the directors a

couple times and that's usually been the respon feedback we've gotten is is this exactly how we've been doing it. I just want to know if anything changing. We said no, this is how we've just wanted to capture it all in a more clean format so everybody would know what we're doing and they'd have a table to use and to make it a little bit cleaner for everyone. Um so we have run that through everything. It hasn't gone through the last step. After you folks review it, then it goes back to the um to the fire union for their review of policy and then would come back for a final approval by you. But uh this is just an opportunity for both introduce it to you, explain what it is. You have you don't have to um provide feedback tonight if you want some time to think about it or we won't be bringing it back. I I just want to move to the next step of the process and you have plenty of time to add more comment or any concerns or anything else you want us to consider changing. We can certainly do that. So,

thank you Mr. Council. Any questions?

Council Straer. Yeah, the the only thing I thought of that I was wondering if we would want to clarify somewhere and I don't know if it would belong actually in this document, but we have had some confusion in the past about um city council budget amendments and if a city council member doesn't feel comfortable with a budget amendment, kind of what the process is to move that forward for discussion. It's not approving anything, right? So, it's a kind of a different signature issue, but I just wondered if we researched that, if that issue fits in here and you want to tackle that at the same time or um if that's kind of a separate thing that you want to handle. I was just curious what your take was on that. Should we look at that at the same time that we're looking?

Um I guess maybe Mr. Mayor be I can add some of the context of that. I mean, I think the process on those has been pretty routinely informal over the years. I I think that hasn't been particularly one that has had any really been captured in because again it's it's part of the process to get it to the council agenda, not to necessarily approve it, right? The approval of still has to come to the council ultimately. So that step of the process is part of just the internal process. So, however the council would like that done, or if you want that added in here, we certainly can. Uh, it just hadn't been thought of. Most of these contracts or agreements in here are things that come through the budgeting to purchasing, through finance, through an agreement of some sort, and that's just a little bit different. That's more of internal until it ultimately gets in front of this for the entire council to review the amendment. But we can certainly add it if you wish, or if you want to do something else, that's fine. Mr. Mayor,

Council Sher. Yeah, I was more just curious if if we researched that issue and we found out that there was like a policy basis for how we're doing it. It sounds like there's not. This is just kind of how the city council is is running its own internal operations and that's for us to handle that way. I was just curious like is there a policy around that because it's something that came up um recently on a budget amendment and it just kind of got me thinking that's all. So if if there's not a policy that needs to be amended around that I'm fine. I was just it seemed like a related topic around signatures that's why I was bringing it up.

And there hasn't been a particular policy on that particular subject that I'm aware of.

Yeah. I mean that that's more of a routing slip I think more than anything else. It has no effect or force of law um compared to all these other items which do um bind the city to a certain outcome when they are when the appropriate person signs. Um so I'll I'll leave that to council president if he wants to bring up a separate related topic on that with on that. But that's frankly it's a finance and our finance director is not here to really hit I think Jenny do you have anything you want to add on that? She is here so she can at least weigh in. Um I want to say that was a Todd implement many years ago.

Uh mayor and council members uh council trader this is not the budget amendment form is not part of the any policy. It's an internal document is communication tools to make sure that we have acknowledgements from the proper channels like via director, mayor and council liaison of that department. Then the formal process comes to council agenda. Then you guys appropriate or deny. So to answer your question, it is not part of any formal policy. It's simply a communication tool. Thanks Jenny. Yep. Yeah, Mr. Mayor

Cton if you still need that input, but based upon what we've just heard from finance, I think we can I feel safe moving forward with what you've presented so far, not including the enhancements because I think that's a whole separate item than what we're intending this new policy to address. All right, I will do that. Thank you. Okay.

Well, we'll take this to the uh parties that be with the local and you'll see this back at some point in time in the future. Okay, thank you. Okay, with that we'll move on to our public hearings for this evening. First item up is item 26 is a public hearing for committee input on Meridian's community development block grant program action plan. We will open this public hearing with comments from Mrs. Campbell.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. I'm excited to be here to kick off another year of the CDBG program. Uh just a quick reminder of what CDBG is. If I can get it to change. Is it ready? Okay. Okay. So, quick overview. Um this is a grant that we received directly from HUD and it is to provide housing stability for our low to moderate income residents. Low to moderate income is uh designated by 80% or less of the area median income. So, we have three guiding documents that we use to implement this program. The first one is our five-year plan where we develop our goals for the next five years. And then each year we do our annual action plan where we identify the specific projects that we're going to put the funding toward. And then at the end of the year then we do our uh caper which is the uh just shows the progress. So when you're thinking about CDBG and you are curious about like who actually benefits from this. So as I mentioned it's 80% of the area median income for Meridian residents. And what this actually looks like is for a fourperson household that would be a max of $85,600 per year that they could make and still qualify for this program. So it's actually um based on what our incomes are here and our housing affordability, it's it's pretty high and there's a lot of people who qualify for it. Um for housing accessibility, the median rent is on according to realtor.com is $2,600 a month roughly. And for housing to be considered accessible, then it should be less than uh 30% of your income. So to afford rents here, then you would need to make about $104,000 to have it be affordable. So typical jobs that we're seeing in Meridian, uh this is based on 2025 data from Department of Labor. Um so all these jobs that are listed here, the people would typically qualify for our programs. So, office and admin

support, sales and customer service, healthcare support, food service, transportation and maintenance, teaching, educational support. So, it it really qualifies a lot of people. So, this public hearing, I'm here today to get input from the community, from all of you to make sure that we are in going in the right direction. We want to make sure that our consolidated plan stays relevant. We want to evaluate what we've done in previous years, make sure those projects still work for us, and we want to go with a targeted approach where if we're seeing a specific service that's missing in the community that will help with housing stability, that we're reaching out to them directly to ask them to to apply for our program. So, as we're looking at what we've done in previous years, this most recent year that ended in September, um we funded Jesse Tre's emergency rental assistance program and they helped 22 households when their goal was 20 and they spent uh $43,698. Uh Boys and Girls Club Youth Scholarships, they were also really successful. The goal doesn't reflect this very well, though. uh they served 38 students, but uh their goal was originally 87. They had a hard time um projecting what they thought it would cost. And so we worked with them a lot to get a better idea of of how much it would be to help the same student with the different programs that they have throughout the year. So like the summer program and not just counting like the the beginning of the school year programs. So that did drastically reduce it, but they still did really good work. um and they spent about almost $35,000. And then with NeighborWorks Boyc, they had intended to serve um eight eight households to repair their homes and they ended up doing seven. They were um a little bit under spent. Their original award was $160,000, but they couldn't really do another project for less than

$10,000. So that's why that was returned. So as far as city projects then we were working on the northwest second and northwest third walkability. Uh it was mostly completed in pe in uh the previous program year but we did finish the street lightss that were associated with it at the beginning of this year. So in total it was almost $255,000 that was put toward that project. And we are currently working on the Northwest 7th walkability project. And there's a map of it. It's kind of small, so sorry for that. It's hard to see, but um it's out to bid right now. So, we're hoping to get started on that pretty soon. Um so far, we've invested almost $53,000 into that one, and any funding that we have will go towards that. Um, as far as lessons learned, so uh this was the first um city-led construction project. So I am not typically the project manager for these, but um it was uh something that we see we thought that it would be important for me to be able to learn so that we could make these projects more efficient and uh just move a little bit quicker instead of trying to get other people to manage these projects for us. So I work with parks and rec quite a bit to learn a lot from him and uh then as I mentioned with Boys and Girls Club closer collaboration to increase the impact per participant and get better reporting on what we're actually doing. So the total funding that we had available last year was $790,000 and we spent almost 500,000 of that. You can see here we spent um $78,000 in public services, 150,000 in housing, 245 in public approve improvements, 23,000 on admin, and then the remaining uh 293,000 is going towards the um Northwest 7th project.

So, we have our competitive applications opening up on April 1st. So, that's just next week. Uh we have two separate applications. There's the public service one and then housing. So they are not competing for the same funding. Uh we always provide the maximum that we can for public services. And we're guessing it's going to be around $80,000 again this year. Um again, our current projects are emergency rental assistance and the youth scholarships just as an idea of what we've done in the past. For housing, uh we're guessing it's going to be right around 200,000 again. And the only one we currently have is the homeowner repair one. Um, and then we also have our internal projects that we're guessing we'll be able to put an additional 200,000 toward. So, our tenative timeline, um, the application will be open the month of April. In May, we'll have our scoring committee recommend projects and then I'll enter that into our action plan and that will be open for public comment the month of June. Um I have mostly on your on your agenda for June 2nd that I'll be here for a public hearing at the beginning of it and then um I'll be doing community outreach throughout the month of June and July 7th will be the final public hearing and then we'll close the public comment period then. So people are definitely invited to reach out to me if they have any comments on it and uh with that I'll stand for questions.

Thank you Crystal Council. Any questions? Okay. Thank you very much. And Crystal, are you going to want this public hearing left open? No, that's good. Okay. Okay. All right. Appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Kirk. We have anyone to sign up on this item? Mr. Mayor, no. Okay. Is there anybody present who would like to provide testimony on this item? Either online, you can use the raise your hand function, or if you're in the room, you can come forward. Seeing no one raising their hand or coming forward. I have a motion. Mr. Mayor, Councilman Overton,

I move that we close the public hearing for community input on Meridian's community development block grant program action plan. Have a motion second to close the public hearing. Is there any discussion? If not, in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Oppos? Nay. Eyes have it and the public hearing is closed. Thank you very much. With that, we'll move on to item 27, which is public hearing for proposed fee increase related to return payment fee. And we will open this public hearing with comments from Jenny.

Hello again. Um, this is our return uh payment fee that we would like to formally add back to our fee schedule that was inadvertently taken off during our last um fee update. Um, I don't have a presentation prepared, but I'll stand for any questions. Thank you, council. Any questions? Seeing none. All right, Mr. C, anyone sign up on this item? Mr. Mayor, nobody signed up. Okay. Is there anybody present would like to provide any comments on this item or either online? You can use raise your hand or in the room come forward. Seeing no one coming forward or raising their hand. Do I have a motion? Mr. Mayor, Councilman Overton,

move that we close the public hearing for the proposed fee increase related to return payment fee. Second. Have a motion, a second to close the public hearing. Is there any discussion? If not, in favor signify by saying I. I. Post nay. The eyes have it. The public hearing is closed. Next item up is item 28, resolution number 26-2575. Mr. Mayor, Councilwoman Little Roberts. Mr. Mayor, I move that we support resolution 26-2575, a resolution adopting a new fee schedule for return payments and authorizing the Meridian Finance Department to collect such fee. Second.

Have a motion, a second to approve resolution number 26-2575. Is there discussion? If not, all in favor signify by saying I. Opposed? Nay. The eyes have it and the resolution is agreed to council. Anything under feature meeting topics or do I have a motion to adjurnn? Mr. Mayor we adjourn. Second. Motion second to adjurnn. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Post nay. The eyes have it. We are ajourned.