City Council - workshop

All right, good evening, everyone. We're going to go ahead and start tonight's City Council workshop. City Clerk, we'll take the role, but all are present. And we're going to start with an update from Mr. Scott Swanson, our Director of Aviation. Welcome, Scott, and we look forward to your report tonight for tonight's workshop.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor, Council. Thank you, one, for the time, opportunity to speak to you today. And then we're going to be covering some of the electrical issues involving hanger sets out at the airport and things that just we need to ensure we correct the right way moving forward. So I set to the left of each of your keyboards a three pages of paper stapled together. The first page is along with the back of that page is a proposal. TO THE COUNCIL REGARDING ELECTRICAL INFRASTRUCTURE IMPROVEMENTS FOR THE 200-300 HANGERS. AND IN THE BACK OR, EXCUSE ME, LAST PAGE IS A EXCEL FORMATTED SHEET KIND OF SHOWING A BREAKDOWN of costs and expectations, and this workshop will end with a recommendation from the board president, Mr. Randy Neary, on the best way to move forward in the view of the board and other people we have discussed. Without further ado on that, I would like to invite Mr. Randy Neary to the podium to kind of talk through this process as he was kind of the wheel behind getting all this moving and forward and put in front of you today.

Thank you, Scott.

Thank you for being here tonight, by the way.

Thank you. Randy Neary, I am your chairperson for the advisory board for 2026 and 2027. I've met with many of you many a time. I'm going to give you a quick synopsis of kind of where we're at currently. So many of you may know that the two and 300 hangers are the west end of the airport. They're the old hangers, the ones that were moved here from when the airport was previously out by some plot. And that electrical system comprised of a main panel by gate one, and then it came up overhead and it would hit a circuit, one circuit, one 20 amp circuit to each individual hanger. And within that hangar originally would be one or two light bulbs, one outlet just to run a battery charger, very, very low, low amperage, very low impact to that city system. And then that would what we call daisy chain in the business with daisy chain from hangar row to hangar row through hangars to the others. Well, since then. In fact, the mayor and I walked the problem, and it happened to be funny that a hangar door was open about that far, and I only saw about 10 electrical violations within that three feet. But since then, people have added refrigerators, freezers, man caves, air compressors, mini splits, all off of this 120-amp circuit. And then about two years ago, the panel at Gate 1 said, due to neglect and lack of maintenance and overloading fried. What that happens is through the expansion and contraction of the heat load of your wires, the wires come loose, they arc, buses go bus to bus, phase to phase, starts blowing stuff up, and that's what happened out there. We lost power at gate one, and then we lost power through about 70 hangers. Through that process, Scott got with Idaho Power, they came out, they looked at it, how do we have to fix it, and...

Poor Scott. What's the electrician's name for the city? Brent? The electrician for the city? Bob.

Bob. And Bob met out there, and then I met out there with them all as well. Just so you all know, I've been an electrical contractor for 25 years, so that's why I'm discussing this. That problem, Idaho Power said it was illegal. What we're doing is grossly illegal. Scott has attested to that in the past. And we have to fix the problem. That's what has kept the catalyst to all this. So in that 200 and 300 block, since then, Idaho Power has put infrastructure in for the 200 block, which is about 69 hangars. That infrastructure consists of underground transformers and J-boxes at every end of every row hanger. So both the west end and the east end of each of those hangers. That's to the tune of about $38,000 to the city. We're using a number in the infrastructure or in the cost in the spreadsheet of 80 grand because there's some internal financing that will happen at the end of the year. because Caldwell City Electrical Department did the work. And we know the airport has to pay, you know, one entity pays the other entity. So we feel as a board that that's still roughly an $80,000 cost in our coffers of the airport. So that infrastructure is put in for the 200 hangars. There will be some infrastructure that needs to be put in the 300 hangars. We'll talk about that in the thing. That's phase one. That is just Idaho power infrastructure. Nothing to do with the hangars yet. So what'll have to happen then is what we call meter packs. They're gang meters where there'll be multiple meters. It'll come out of those meters and it'll feed underground. to each individual hanger. That's the phase two that you'll see in the Excel sheet when I go over that. And then the phase three is the individual owner's responsibility, which would be to pull the wire from the meter base and then any internal wiring you do within your hanger. You would set a 100-amp panel. That's the amount we're giving them through Idaho Power and their infrastructure. Each hanger would do a 100-amp panel. And then if you wanted to put two lights, two outlets, that's one cost. If you wanted to put 10 lights and 10 outlets, that's another cost. That would be up to the individual hanger. And the reason why working closely with Bob and also the city building department, the city electrical inspectors, that would allow the city to make sure that all the electrical is done to code, that permits are gotten as they need it on an individual basis, and they can get inspected. Because the last thing we want is continuity. Homeowner if you will electrical work like it's been out there and again That hangar was only open that far and I literally saw ten violations. It was pretty rough So that's what the summary of the first page and the second page is I think you've all been emailed this a couple of months ago I know the mayor and I have talked about it when we went and did our walk around and the lay of the land if you will so if you'll turn to the Excel spreadsheet here If you look in the 200 hangars on the upper left, you'll see phase one. That's the 80 grand that I talk about that has put the infrastructure in, the Idaho power infrastructure. It stops at Transformers and J-Boxes. You can see over there, 80 grand is what the original estimate was. And again, we're calculating that's what's going to be spent, even though it's some of its internal money. We'll have a final accounting of that after the end of the year. Phase two. We have an estimate of 250 grand. We did get a bid from one electrical contractor. I am not bidding this. I want that clear. I've been asked to. I will not do it. I don't want a conflict of interest in this, even though I do a lot of work for the city. AME bid it at 170 grand, but that was not to put any underground infrastructure in. I have since talked to the owner of AME, and we kind of got a ballpark to come to that 250 grand. That, again, will set individual meter packs at the end of each hangars. There'll be a main breaker, and that's where it'll stop, and then it'll take a conduit up to each individual hanger. Phase three, when we talk about that's to the individual owners, that again is that what are you doing inside of your hanger? What is your preference? We do show a $5,000 kind of rough guess because I want to paint a real picture. I think that's something that hasn't happened with this electrical issue is a real picture painted. What is our total cost all in kind of a thing? I'm trying to do that. In the 300 hangars, you'll see we have a projected for phase one of 60 grand. That has not been spent yet. That infrastructure is right there at the cusp of the 300 hangars. And then Idaho Power will have to come in and do the underground set transformers and J-boxes again. Phase two, which would be again setting the meter packs and doing the underground infrastructure to each individual hanger on that side, would be about $210,000. And then when you add all that up, that's about a $600,000 project to the city. That right now, where we're trying to figure out is where the responsibility lies. I'm an advisory capacity. I know I've talked to some of you individually where I feel it's at as a developer at the airport, what I've had to do before out there, where's the responsibility of the city through all these years, all that. Luckily, I'm glad that's your pay grade, not mine. So that total cost is 600. If the owners individually paid for that, if you go to the pink boxes, if the owners were to pay that whole 600 grand, there's 108 hangers that it affects, that would be $5,556 per hanger owner. That's the 600,000 divided by 108 hanger owners. That would be option one. That would be one option that the city council says we have no culpability here. It falls 100% on the owners. This is what you have to do. Option two is if the city pays 100% of the infrastructure, which would be the 80 and the 60 for $140,000 total. That would be a deduct out of that 55, 56 of 1296, giving the individual hangar owners a cost of $4,259. So that would be the city says we're responsible to put the infrastructure in. There is history of that happening at the airport. where the city puts the infrastructure. And then when you tie into that infrastructure, you pay for the costs that come associated with that extra. Then another option that we gave you was a 70-30 split. We just picked a number, could be 60-40, could be 50-50. Again, we're just painting the pictures and the numbers for you guys to decide how you want to handle it. Option three, if it was a 30-70 split, 30% of it being paid for by the city, that total $600, and then 70% being by the individual hanger owners, that would give us a total of $2,981 per hanger owner. Then if you go down in the blue category, that's a $5,000 estimate. That's just a number of what I think it would cost to put the infrastructure in the hangar, set the panel, do a couple of lights, handful of circuits for some electrical outlets, roughly five grand there. And so then in the green, we recap. Option one is the blue, that $5,000 holds true for every cost. So the first number, option one, you take that $5,000 and the 55, 56, you get your number option two, same thing in option three. If you do a 70 30 split, um, the ideas from our board is to really try to paint that picture. So you guys have a better idea of moving forward. We have, none of us on the board disagree that it is a problem it is a it is a problem it's it's it has been said it's surprising we haven't had a fire to date that's a true statement so it is something that needs fixed it's just how do we fix it um and then if you look if we were to take this 600 000 plus The 540,000, which is 108 times the 5,000, this is about a $1.14 million project totally all in, not to the city. The city would really only be responsible for up to 600 of that. But it's still a big project. And that is something that hasn't necessarily been articulately portrayed yet to date, that this is a bigger project than what we thought it was. But right now, as it stands, the city possibly up to 600, the individual hangar owners. Also, we are projecting Idaho Power is giving us grace period right now. There is a point where Idaho Power will say no more and will shut the power off. That is a foregone conclusion. It will happen. We don't know when. We keep asking for grace. As long as we're proving that we're moving forward, they've been gracious with us to allow this to happen. And then like when I met with the mayor and we walked it and he said it very clearly, we now know there's a problem. So now it's on us to figure out how to fix it. So that's kind of what I've presented here. I will let Scott talk about the recommendation from the board. I don't know that. We fully settled on one, but the board does support this and the board does know we have to do something. He's probably talked a little more with all the individual board members individually. We just know it has to be fixed and what's it gonna take? That's what you guys have to decide. So I would stand for any questions.

Sorry, Councilor Tillman.

Out of all of these options, have you heard from any of the hanger owners of which one they would, I mean, obviously they'd prefer that the city pick up the whole thing, but if that's not going to be a realistic situation, where do they tend to fall in reality?

I will tell you, we've had probably four to six hanger owners in some of our meetings. Cause we have talked about this for some time. This has not been a one meeting and done. And actually I would tell you that, not a single one of them has said the city should pay for it all. They realize that I put a value, now mind you, remember I build hangers as well, it's not just electrical. I'm gonna say this is gonna be an easily $10,000 upgrade to every hanger, just straight across the board, having good, clean, consistent, well-inspected power is going to increase the value of each one of these hangers. So they realize that. And I have heard we are comfortable to pay up to four to five grand, which would almost be all of it on them. But I don't know that they put in that $5,000 after the fact. So that's a conversation we haven't gone out to the stakeholders yet and the individual hanger owners. We've had them show up. We've had a part of our meetings and let them spend quite a bit of time talking about it. So we... but I don't know that this full complete picture has been painted to them yet for that conversation. So to answer your question again is yes, I think they realize that they owe something what it is. I don't know.

Thank you. Thank you. Counselor Tillman. Counselor. All good.

Yeah. Randy, are these, I, this has been this way a long time. Are these hanger owners able to get insurance on, on the occupants of their hangers? I mean,

I would have to say yes, because that's a requirement of your land lease, is for them to have insurance. So to some degree, yes. Where and how, I don't know. I'm at the other end, so we don't have that.

When you build a new hangar at the other end, is power there? You just stub into it? You got to bring it to you.

That's a little bit of the heartburn I've had, even when I built my hanger. So when I built my hangers and the hanger next to mine, the city had a, I had to pay back. It was like a hundred dollars a lineal foot of what I took to pay for the infrastructure that was brought in. And at that time, when, when Mr. Orton was the public works director, The infrastructure was undersized. I could not use it. So I had to bring in my own power. I did choose to bring in three-phase power at my own expense, right? So it's not comparable. But I still spent about 60 grand when I built all those hangars on dishman that was unrecoverable so the city did refund that info that that lineal foot price now when i'm at the at the east end everything 100 on me obviously i knew that going in it was not a surprise 100 on me um i could give you some numbers we spent about 500 grand in infrastructure down there and so i have so many square footage to make that up in So the heartburn in me on the developer side is, Hey, I had to bring mine in. Why don't you have to bring yours in? But at the same time, the compassion side is I have an opportunity to make that money back or I wouldn't do it. Correct. That's the idea. These guys that own those hangers, I think there's an assumption that they were, should be given the opportunity or not. How do I say this? The assumption is that, Utility should be provided and what where does the city's responsibility lie in that and I can I can understand that assumption I don't have the answer because I don't have to make it.

Thank you so much Thank You counselor all good councillor, Denver Thank You mr. Mayor Randy.

Thank you for your presentation. You've been in this the electrical field long enough and the hangar owner business long enough, so do you think that you're adequately representing the 109 hangar owners by saying that something's gotta be done or do you think that there's gonna be some hanger owners that are gonna say, hey, I'm perfectly fine. I'm perfectly fine being illegal.

don't do anything because i'm not coming up with a five thousand dollars do you think that there will be any that will say that i do i i would never pretend to say i could speak for 109 people or 108 people but yes um i think lack of understanding they would give pushback and say i'm fine i don't see what the problem is um and not my problem not I'm not going to pick it up now when Idaho power shuts the power off. And that is a foregone conclusion. It will happen. I did not believe it when Scott told me that. And then I was in a meeting with Idaho power and they flat out said, we will just one day we're going to throw the switch. And so then that's when people will definitely get where they think that they need to upgrade their electrical.

Mr. Mayor, one more question. And this is to Justin. Are you ready, Justin? Now you've got to pretend you've been paying attention the whole time.

Airport hangers is definitely a subject in which I am fluent, so I am happy to take a stab.

Is this an LID issue? I mean, we have business improvement districts. Is this an LID thing that we say, okay, it's going to cost $1.4 million to do that, and if we got all the hangar owners on board, could we create an LID for it?

I don't think there is the possibility to use the LID tool for power infrastructure. It's usually used for publicly owned infrastructure like streets and sidewalks. So that is probably a good question for an attorney. But I think that you can't use the LID tool to finance that kind of situation. It's clear. that you can use it to pay for sidewalks, streets, you know, city utilities, water and sewer, but it has to be city-owned infrastructure in that sense, and I don't think power falls under that category, but that is just my understanding. And I could look more at the law and get back to you on that question.

All right, Justin, thank you for that. Real quick, can I?

We have discussed at a board level, and again, we don't know the logistics and the legality of it, but could this be added on to the length of the lease? So if somebody has 10 years back, could you take that, say it was $9,200, can that $9,200 be, well, actually, the $5,000 should fall on the home or the hangar owner's at the time of the service but the the say anywhere from the 2900 to 5500 could that be put on to the length of your lease so if you had 10 years on your lease would it be an additional 500 a year kind of a thing again we don't know the legality of it but that is something we've kind of proposed here a little bit in the notes is this an opportunity or an option because i would think that options would be coming out of the air somewhere rather than having wholesale power shut off out there correct yeah and again we haven't had that meeting with the stakeholders or the hangar owners when that time comes that would be the next step but we felt as a board we felt that it was very important to catch the council up to speed before we went any further with this so you were painted that real picture

so mr mayor i have a question there's probably one person in the audience who may know the answer to this question and i'm not sure they're paying attention either but didn't when we created the plaza didn't we create a business improvement district to re-engineer the whole electrical system on the plaza to make sure that we could proceed with the plaza so my uh i I thought the BID for the plaza was to address the infrastructure needs of the electricity. Do you know anything about that, Mark?

I can tell you my company did a lot of the work on the plaza for the city and we work directly for the city, not for the owners. Now the owners, once we put the meter packs in for the city, Then it became the owner's responsibility. And we did maybe five of them around the plaza where the city, because your electricians couldn't get to it, so we were hired. And we put the Idaho, you know, the Idaho power conduits were closed. We stubbed them up into our meter bases and our disconnects. And then the city paid for that. Now, I don't know if that answers your question, but that's how we got paid.

Councillor Denver. We'll look into the LID and BID options and see what we can come up with. for funding mechanisms, but that's a great idea if we're able to do something like that. I also know we had an urban rule meeting earlier with a presentation, so we'll juggle all three, technically about seven total, and see what we can come up with.

Okay. Am I done?

Are you good on that, Justin? Yes. Any other questions from council?

Thank you.

you mr mayor all right anything else yeah i think the only last thing i have on this is uh with all the information from randy kind of the and talking with counselor static at the last board meeting last week our expectation recommendation on this is going to be option two from the board um essentially saying that the city will cover that phase one cost Again, a lot of that comes from a little bit of my input and perspective but I just feel that I think the the obligation of the city is to ensure that utilities are available for hangar owners to have the opportunity to connect to now whether they actually connect or not is up to the individual hangar owner and We can't force them. But that is just my recommendation on that and my end state on this is to come back at the next council meeting in August with this on the Consent calendar for approval as option two to move forward with this project All right, thank you Scott for that update tonight on the electrical issue at the airport We appreciate the research and all the work that's been done and we'll look at some options and then get back to council and

With that, tonight's workshop is concluded and we'll start back at the top of the hour. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you.