City Council - Regular Meeting

We'll call the meeting to order, beginning with the invocation and the pledge. Almighty God, send down upon those who hold office in this city the spirit of wisdom, compassion, and justice. Grant that with steadfast purpose we may faithfully serve our community, seeking the common good, protecting the vulnerable, and promoting the well-being and harmony of all who dwell here. Amen. I pledge allegiance 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. All right. Welcome to the September 15th, 2026 City Council meeting. Clerk will note all members are present and accounted for. Are there any amendments to the agenda?

There are none tonight, sir.

Any declarations of conflict, ex parte contacts, or site visits? Seeing none, please present the consent calendar.

Item A is minutes from the September 1, 2026 City Council meeting. Item B is payables September 2 through September 16, 2026. Item C is June cash and investments. Item D is disposal of parks equipment. Item E is Lucky Larry Subdivision Master Development Agreement, SUBD-26-1. Item F is Prairie Avenue Annexation Acceptance of Rights of Way and Easements, ANNX-25-5. And item G is McKinley Meadows Special Use Permit Reasoned Decision, SUP-26-3, Appeal APL-26-2.

Any questions on the consent agenda?

I have two. Item C, under Budget Status Report, there's a line item 423, which calls out OASIS. which we seem to be over budget on. What is the OASIS?

So OASIS is our domestic violence program, and the budget just has not been updated. We received grants, and so we need to do a budget amendment to reflect the budgeted dollars received on the grants, and that has not occurred yet.

Okay, thank you. And then the other one, item D, disposal of parks equipment, a foam stream unit. I don't know what that is. seems that we bought it in 2020 for roughly $40,000. Does it have zero value now? I'm unclear on what we're doing with that disposal.

So it is going to auction. Oh, sorry. I didn't see Chris was here.

Hi, good question. Chris Hammerman, Parks and Recreation Director. So that was purchased during COVID to sanitize playground equipment. And so it is no longer needed for that purpose. Also, the team has purchased a high pressure washer that heats up the water. So that works a lot better than that piece of equipment. so it's not worthless but it doesn't serve the purpose that we purchased it for and there's really not a lot of value we we think we maybe we can get someone might purchase it and want to use a diesel engine so that's like a four thousand dollar value so I see. That's what I know. That was before my time, but that's what I know about that piece specifically.

Okay. So, yeah, I mean, it seems like for any piece of equipment, there's an inherent, even if it's scrap metal value. Sure. So are we seeking to get something out of it? Yes, we are. What's the plan? Yeah.

Yeah. Auction.

Auction.

Okay. Yes.

Thank you.

You bet.

Ah, the remnants of COVID.

Further questions?

I move to approve the consent calendar as presented. Second. Second.

Motion and a second. Further discussion? Roll call, please.

Stick Leader. Aye. Plew. Aye. Malloy. Aye. Ziegler.

Aye.

Mosby. Aye. Luca.

Aye. Motion passes. We have no public hearings tonight, so we are on to unfinished business. Item A is Hargrave Hathaway Annexation Ordinance.

Move to place the Hargrave Hathaway Annexation Ordinance ANNX-22-8 on its first and only reading by title only while under suspension of the rules. Second.

Motion and a second. Further discussion? Roll call, please.

Clue.

Aye.

Malloy. Aye. Ziegler. Aye. Mosby. Aye. Luca.

Aye.

Stiglieder. Aye.

Motion passes.

An ordinance of the City of Post Falls, a municipal corporation of the state of Idaho, annexing properties consisting of approximately 9.63 acres, located at 1349 and 1421 West Poline Avenue, providing for amendment of the official zoning map and providing for an effective date hereof.

I move to approve the Hargrave Hathaway Annexation Ordinance ANNX-22-8 and to direct the clerk to assign the appropriate number and that it be published by summary only.

Second. Motion and a second. Further discussion? Roll call, please.

Clue? Aye. Malloy? Aye. Ziegler?

Aye.

Mosby? Aye. Luca? Aye. Stiglitter? Aye.

Motion passes. Item B is the Prairie Avenue Annexation Ordinance.

I move to place the Prairie Avenue Annexation Ordinance ANNX-25-5 on its first and only reading by title only while under suspension of the rules. Second.

Motion and second. Further discussion? Roll call, please.

Maloy. Aye. Ziegler. Aye. Mosby.

Aye.

Luca.

Aye.

Stiglitter. Aye. Plew.

Aye. Motion passes. An ordinance of the City of Post Falls, a municipal corporation of the state of Idaho, annexing property consisting of approximately 20.043 acres, located north of West Prairie Avenue, approximately one-third of a mile east of the intersection of North Greens Ferry Road and West Prairie Avenue, providing for an amendment of the official zoning map and providing for an effective date hereof.

I move to approve the Prairie Avenue Annexation Ordinance ANNX-25-5 and to direct the clerk to assign the appropriate number and that it be published by summary only.

Second. Motion and a second. Further discussion? Roll call, please.

Malloy. Aye. Sickler. Aye. Mosby. Aye. Luca. Aye. Stiglitter. Aye. Plew.

Aye. Motion passes. Item C, Westwood Water Distribution Project Phase 1 Road Repair Change Order.

Good evening Mr. Mayor and members of council. Good evening, Jackson Fleshman, project manager for the city of Post Falls. Tonight I'll be presenting a road repair change order related to our Westwood water distribution project phase one. General project update. I got this question last time I presented something on this project to council. And maybe I should take it a step back further to remind council what we are doing in the area. We're replacing the entirety of the water main line and giving everyone a new service and meter in the neighborhood. To date, all the main line is installed. Services are being installed, maybe not as we speak, but they were today. There's 72 on the project. I believe there's 16 remaining. Paving is complete for Westwood, Sandpiper, and Pinewood. To date, there has been three change orders from our contractor totaling in an addition of just under $19,000 and an addition of five days to the contract time. This leaves a remaining $104,000 approximately in council approved contingency. On the consultant side of things, we've had one addition during construction. That addition was just under $16,000. And of that pre-approved council contingency, $6,650 remain. That's budgetary side of things. On the schedule side of things, expected project completion is early October this year. Phase one. Correct. Phase one. Yes, correct. Here's some photos of what we're looking at. This is not typical. for your road to do, uh, the waterline trenches over to the left. So it's a bit difficult to see, but there's approximately three, four foot and it varies as the extents of the roads go down, but three to four foot from our waterline trench, where the road is beginning to separate. So not a typical thing. Road is failing. So that line.

Yes, sir. That's not a saw cut. That's just a split split. It is just split. Okay. Yes, sir.

Was that there prior to the work? No.

Negative. No.

Was it caused by the work?

Yes. Okay. Yes, but a pre-existing condition. It's not as if the work caused the issue, but that issue was already there, if that makes sense. The contractor is not responsible for this damage, if that's what you're getting at. So yes, a change in condition. I have a couple slides here. I might bounce back and forth to get all the information to you guys. But pictures for you guys. The picture on the left is a core truck. So the front end of it's lifted up. They're doing a core on the back there. And picture on the right, you can see that core machine working with the strata truck in front of it. Yeah. So yeah, there was a change in condition. Because of this, our consultant recommended that we get a geotech in there to see actually what was going on and get a true recommendation on what we should do. They performed six cores. And within those cores, they found a bunch of organics and non-organics, ash burn pile stuff, miscellaneous fill, just kind of trash stuff in some of those areas. And then apparently, supposedly, Ponderosa has a history of undocumented fill. Now, that's not something we took and said, yep, for sure it does. We just kind of took that. And along with our geotech results, we determined that there's some stuff in the road that shouldn't be there. Following the recommendation from our geotech, or sorry, following the report from our geotech, the recommendation is a full curb-to-curb replacement, not a Band-Aid, that has a 20-year design life. So flipping back and forth, you can see here this picture on the left is a better bird's eye view, you can see where we're at, those six red dots are where the cores were performed. So yeah, this is not a typical thing for the road to do, so we had a geotechnical analysis performed, and what that got us was the ability for them to recommend a fix to our consultant, which then That allowed our consultant to make a roadway design, which then allowed our contractor to give us a proposal to do that. Excuse me, to do that. And then as a general note, which I talk more on this later in the presentation, but we are fixing a very severe section of Ponderosa. If any of the councilors have driven down, Councilor Plew, I know you're in the area. It's pretty rough, so that section down at the bottom of the hill, that's about the 500 foot we are talking about. And then here's an area map for you that I wanted to provide because it does, I wanted to discuss how the, when we're negotiating a change order with our contractor, we don't always just take a number from our contractor and we say, yep, sounds good, okay, good to go. We looked at, our consultant looks at that and we make sure things are caught. So just as a great example, one of the things that was caught within this initial change order pricing, it has since been fixed for this presentation, but in the initial proposal sent over to the city, they didn't account for the asphalt and some of the work that goes with that, that they would have performed anyway, regardless of this change. So that amount of work was deducted from their cost that they were trying to give to us. Here's a few more photos, and they really don't do it justice. I was trying to get that specific section of sidewalk that is just very, very severe. It's in the council memo, but we're repairing about 90 feet of sidewalk along with this project, simply due to the fact that if we fix the road and run the road to a proper grade, the road would go over the top of the sidewalk because it's so dipped. So we have to go in there and raise the sidewalk, fix it. Because we're going in there, in two sections so close to each other, we're just fixing that small stretch.

And that reason the sidewalk is for drainage, is that the reason why it has to go up?

If that, so if the sidewalk in this specific picture didn't go up when we fixed the road, the asphalt is gonna go almost over the top of the sidewalk. The way road drainage works, yeah, so. due to drainage, but the way the road profile and water drainage. I'm guessing it's probably not ADA compliant the way it is. No, it is not.

I was going to ask if it can be marked off on our ADA test sheet.

It will certainly be built to ADA standards. I can say that. Yeah, you can see in those pictures, there's almost like little white lines on each individual panel or on a couple of them. It's where they shaved off how it raised up so that people weren't catching toes, bike wheels, whatever. Let's talk the financial side of things. So some of this was already mentioned in that first initial slide, but just so we can run through it, this is just where we are to date. The original approved agreement was 1.23 million and some change. I won't bore you guys by going through every number. The original approved construction contingency for that was 10% and change orders one through three have eaten up about 19,000 of that. So to date, the agreement with changes is $1,249,857.42 and we have a remaining contingency of just over $104,000.

Do you have the request for this slide listed? I do. Oh, there it is. Okay, thank you so much.

So just walking through just where we are today so we have a good number in our mind, because I know it's a little confusing. And then the two numbers down at the bottom, that's the total approved construction budget and the total approved design and CMS budget to date. So to date, we are like a couple thousand dollars over $1.7 million in total approved budget. change order four, the reason we're here tonight. So the price we got from our contractor when we asked or when they presented change order four was $289,646.10. We have that remaining contingency of 104,000. So the difference in that is 185,519.02. So that's what we're lacking. Request from council tonight is that number plus an additional $30,000 to remain in contingency to account for known and unknown project items during closeout. Specifically some of the knowns to get on that for half a second. As a part of this project we've been in people's yards and not everyone's yards but there's a handful where just unfortunately due to the age of the neighborhood we can't find the meter so we're going from curb almost to like front stoop. And there's just a... Councilor Plew is understanding. I'm sure you've probably seen a few of those yards. So wanting to retain an amount of money in contingency to address those known items as well as any other unknowns that come up as we close out. So again, just to reiterate, the total request for tonight is $215,519.02.

And where is that difference coming from? Because that's like a negative 185,000, right? Am I misreading this? We have 104 left in contingency.

Yes, that's the additional amount, yeah.

Yes, the 215 is the total amount I'm asking for because we are in a deficit to approve this, just to approve this without any leftover contingency. We're in a deficit of 185.

Right, so where does that come from if we approve the request?

Like funding? It's from our budget. It's from the same.

From like the general fund?

No, it would be the same project budget that we're currently using, which is, oh man, I don't think I have it on here for you. That's okay. I will get that to you. Please, John, yeah.

So there's more money not in the contingency.

John Beach, I'm public works director. I knew there was a reason I came tonight. So what we're looking to split this for, and I believe it's in your memo. I could be wrong about that. The water division will remain responsible for their portion of the road they would have fixed regardless. So their budget doesn't necessarily change. It's just looks a little bit, it would be a little bit higher for the water fund because they have to do a little bit deeper reconstruction of the road. The rest of it will come from our streets reconstruction budget, our annual allocation to fix streets in the city. And this fits within the approved 26 budget.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, John. Thank you for your question. Yeah, I certainly misspoke on that. There is a portion that is coming from the general fund street reconstruction budget.

My question is, this is a, first question is, this is a phase one, right? Yes. So as we continue with phase two of this project, is the same problem likely to occur as we move death farther down the roadway?

I don't believe so. Let me pull up a better map for you. So this doesn't show the full project extents, but for phase one of the project, Ponderosa Boulevard is going from Ross Point Road to Westwood. So this section of Ponderosa, or I want to make sure I can say that before I say it out loud, I don't believe we'll be in Ponderosa at all during phase two of the project.

And the same condition hasn't presented itself in any other area besides that?

No.

Future phases are all north, right?

Yes, yeah. Future phases are going to be Ross Point Road, Ridgewood, maple, wood, and maybe a little bit of first, I think. There's 54 services I know that we're doing on phase two. We've done 72 on phase one, or will.

Is there anything that can be done on the off chance that those same soil conditions exist in the area? Is there anything that can be done to mitigate so as they're digging on phase two, that you can be like, oh, these conditions exist, or it's just like as soon as you dig, if it exists, it's gonna slide, or is there anything we can do to keep from coming back here is what I'm getting to next year on phase two, and finding out that it's gonna be more expensive?

Yeah, I'd like to step back. I think in our design of most of these projects, we typically have a good idea of what's in the ground, roughly, with geotech analysis. this specific section is so tight and failing that this is a, as I mentioned in the beginning of the project, this is a not typical thing that would, I don't think this is going to happen anywhere else. I guess to answer your question on what we can do to prevent it, I don't know if we can. Yeah, sorry.

Go ahead, John. Sorry to pop back up. I think the answer I would give to you is we don't know what we don't know. So until you dig up a road, you don't necessarily know if it was built on undocumented fill or not. Where we have as builds, we look at them. Where we have suspicions, we'll do some testing. Unfortunately, when you dig in the ground, you find interesting and weird things, and this is an interesting and weird thing that came up.

It's like taking the wall off in an old house. Exactly. You never know what you're going to find. I get it. I'm just saying that since we know that Ponderosa is like this, is there any reason to believe that a block, a half block away on Ross Point Road, you're not going to find this again? No. And assume for a moment that the same conditions do exist on those. I'm asking, is there anything that we can do to keep from having to come back and redo the whole road? Or it's just like if you dig that hole, the road's going to slide and we're going to be back here again. There's nothing you can do about it. Is that right?

So I'll take a bigger step back. This is the fix for when you find something like this. There are... lots of things we could do to band-aid it through the winter or through a couple of years to where we're coming back and fixing it again. So when we talked through that with the engineer and with our staff, the recommendation is we're already there. The road is already half torn up. Let's not spend money and then spend money again to fix it. Let's just get this section put back.

Totally agree with you on this phase one part.

In terms of if we had reason to anticipate this, we would put it in the project and get it bid if we had a section of road that we thought was going to fail like this when we dug it up.

Right, so when it comes to phase two, there's not like core samples or whatever we can do ahead of time to find out if this is likely to occur and then, and if we found out that it was likely to occur, would it matter or would we just say, hey, we're gonna end up replacing this road?

I think we could spend a lot of money on core samples to have a better idea of whether it will happen or not, but we would end up back at the same place where, oh, this is what happened, and this is the fix for it, so we recommend moving forward.

And you might end up spending money on core samples, and it turns out you don't need to do anything, and you shouldn't have spent that money on core samples to begin with. Correct. And just for background on this road, this road is bad anyway. This is well-spent money, in my opinion, because... I mean, I've seen multiple accidents on the road. It's in bad shape, so I'm happy that I'll be safer on my walk.

I live in this area, too, and for those of you who haven't spent any time on this road, it was already pretty well failing. There's dips, and it's off camber, and there's cracks all over the place, so kind of a... I guess a happy disaster, it was gonna need to be fixed anyway.

Almost like there was poor compaction of the fill.

Correct, almost like there was bad fill under there the entire time.

Or a low spot where people put things before they built a road over it.

I agree that it's good timing to do it, but I wonder if we could just kind of have it on the record. Do we have an amount that the city is saving by bundling it?

with this project instead of doing it all by itself in like a couple of years because it sounds like it's not going to last longer than a couple of years no i don't have a hard dollar amount for you okay however um i have i appreciate the question that you sent in and i really appreciate i really well no uh sorry maybe i should take a step back so we did receive an email with some questions prior to council and that is appreciated Um, and yes, the, the question being, is there a dollar, um, value that we are saving? It's really hard. I found myself struggling to put anything closer than like a six digit number to give you in terms of savings. Um, just cause there's so many variables when it comes to all these projects, but I did run through like the alternative of what, let's say we didn't do this and we just did a temporary patch on the road, got it good enough and then had to come back in the less than five year timeframe. Um, Big thing is it's treated as a separate project, so likely we'd be back in the spring, fixing in the spring, and it's an additional closer, Ponderosa. No one likes that. It's not necessarily a cost savings thing. That's just a fact. No one likes extra construction. We're getting today's construction costs. We're avoiding inflation in terms of doing the whole thing, which is a consideration. There's a handful of efficiencies gained here. So there's no bidding services that we need a consultant to provide to us nor a construction management services like contract from a consultant. And this is a great time to mention that throughout the project, throughout all of this, our consultant hasn't had any additional amount other than the one change, which was for the geotech analysis. Other than that, things have gone very well on the project. And so even though this is an increase to the project, our consultant doesn't feel that they need to increase their budget, which is good. We'd also be eliminating some duplicative efforts and costs. So if we get all of this roadway done, We come back and do a future roadway project, and I don't want to stake my life on this, but there's a world where you come up to your extents, and that's what you do, or you come all the way through, but it's just a mill and overlay, so it's still significantly less work than if you were to patch it and then have to come back and redo the full work required to give you a 20-year design life. And this one isn't necessarily a cost either, but it addresses, I left it as a subpar section of road. I will let our counselors say how severe it is. I don't want to put too many expletives out there, but it is not a nice section of road in town. Maintenance, this isn't on here, but winter maintenance of our road crews, they'd have to come through and try and fix what we put together this season, so we'd have some issues with road maintenance. How much did you back out of their bid for the work they were going to do anyway? Sub 30K, over 20, though. And I just don't want to, I don't want to, I think it was like 26 or something, 26,000 or something. That's a number. It's a number. It's a number.

One figure number and 26,000 and convenience. Convenience isn't a strong enough word. Not having a roadway closed for the public that's near a really great park. And a great school. Yeah. So, okay, so that seems like reasonable, that seems reason enough for me, so thank you so much.

Absolutely, yeah, and I really wanted to give you a dollar rally, I just, I didn't want to throw a dart at the wall either. Timeline of our next steps, Speaking of the school district, so coordination with them has been occurring over the last two, three weeks and it is ongoing as things progress. Phase one completion is anticipated for early October, first couple weeks. Phase two, the design is currently ongoing. I think we're seeing 50% plans here soon. That'll continue through the fall and winter and then we intend on phase two to go in the spring and summer of 27. This is such a great picture for everyone to see. So sometimes our contractors, or maybe you step outside and you're like, it's just my meter box. It's super easy for them just to put in a new meter box. It's a great example of contractors having to come in with a back truck and go around everything that's all so uh the the two uh upright standing things on the on the right and left there those are water meters those are those are how big what are we looking at uh the tops of those are like this big oh wow or so so yeah this is this is every bit of a five six foot hole in the ground in someone's front yard and irrigation wires and electrical utilities and just, just stuff that we deal. It's just fun to show you guys that it's not all super easy.

You have to dig that with a shovel to get around everything.

Could you imagine? I know. What did we do before factor trucks? We just hit all the lines.

Yeah. And when you first put that picture up, I thought, wow, it's people buried water heaters in there. And that's why this road is so bad. Yeah. I know this isn't the middle of the road. Yeah. Yeah. I did have a question about the, the estimate for what the repairs would cost.

Yes.

And just a, I mean, a minor concern that we're not getting bids on this, right? So it's just the contractor telling us this is how much it'll cost. And unlike the competitive bid process, now we're just supposed to take their word for it. What safeguards do we have to make sure that this is the best price that we can get on this work?

Yes. The safeguards we have is the review from our consultants, from staff, and there's contract language that dictates how much of an increase. There's safeguards in our contract that dictate that a contractor can't just say, well I got you on change order works and I'm gonna hit you with whatever the number may be. Things need to be reasonable and there's parameters that are set there.

So if they had come back and said it's gonna be $400,000, I mean, so we're relying then on our engineer to say it shouldn't cost that much or this seems to me to be a competitive price based on the workload.

Correct. I try not to bring up too much of this number and that number as things change, but I think this is a great example just because you brought up the $400,000 number. I believe the initial estimate we received from the contractor and you go back and forth and you work things out and you don't need that for this, whatever. It was like 373, so we took that, we saw the work, the city staff, our consulting engineer, we all see that, we see the work that needs to be done, we all have somewhat of a pulse of that seems a little ridiculous, let's look and see what this is. And then from there, it's an analysis of, I think in this specific instance, they had too high of a, of a per quantity amount for, for like their asphalt or something, or for their excavation, which way brought it down. And so there's, there's those checks and balances too. This isn't just like a, yeah, it'll cost $300,000. There's, there's a line item with, with amounts for each things, uh, for each thing. So if we're, if we're using, um, like asphalt or, or type P surface restoration, for example, we have an initial bid quantity and amount. in our change order, we'll have an amount and an issue and, and a, or a, yeah, a quantity and a like value to it. There is safeguards within our contract that dictate that that value can't be astronomically high. So there's a handful of safeguards. Thank you.

Yeah.

Any other questions?

Thank you. Ready for a motion.

Move to approve the Westwood Water Distribution Project Phase 1 Road Repair Change Order.

Second. Motion to second. Further discussion? Roll call, please.

Ziegler. Aye. Mosby. Aye. Luca. Aye. Stiglitter. Aye. Plew. Aye. Malloy. Aye.

Motion passes. On to Item D, Water Reclamation Facility Solids Handling Improvements Project 1 Guaranteed Maximum Price with Apollo Inc. Whew.

I don't do that on purpose. I am wishing I put in some more pictures in my presentation, though. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the council, Andrew Arbini, projects division manager. So my item this evening, actually I have two items in the presentation, it's D and E, for the solids handling improvements project. Spoiler alert, I do have quite a few slides, but I'm optimistic that I'll be able to run through the first half, which is the project background, and I think is an important piece for everyone to hear where we've been in the last year. I did outline the major talking points I wanted to touch on tonight. And then I also want to thank Councilor Stiglieder for your question. I guess a few questions, which actually led me to go back and look at the presentation and provide some additional context. to hopefully address what you were asking for. So the project background, just to refresh, this has been a planning effort for the last decade, originally included in the 2013 plan and then updated recently in the 2024 update. When we talk about solids handling improvements, this particular project, so what we're talking about are the improvements to the last phase of wastewater treatment at the plant, where we are removing the material from the water, and that's done through two processes, thickening and dewatering. And really that's the thickening and dewatering process, that's the focus of the solids handling project. So the summary of the project, early on in design, we recognized that we needed to prioritize the addition of a second dewatering unit, and that was critical. We needed that yesterday. So we pulled that work into project one and then designated the balance of the salt handling improvements as project two. We also selected a construction manager general contractor delivery method, or CMGC, and I'll talk more on that in a subsequent slide. So, uh, when I look at this list, I was looking through this before the meeting. It's somewhat remarkable how much we've accomplished on this project in the past year. So, uh, July, 2025, uh, council approved the design contract with JV engineers. Since then we brought on Apollo Inc as a CMGC. We did that through a RFQ solicitation, and then we've also purchased several pieces of equipment. So the city pre procured those items to get ahead of long lead times and have that equipment ready. when we start construction which is now with this GMP. We recently finalized the design and then that led to the negotiation of the guaranteed maximum price or GMP that's really the construction project or construction contract to construct the design. So I've presented this before but I think it lays a little bit of the groundwork for what is a construction manager general contractor As I mentioned, it's an alternative delivery method. And essentially, it allows the city or the owner to bring in a contractor, in this case, Apollo. And we selected Apollo through an RFQ. And they come in as a consultant through the design. So over the past eight months, they've been along through the design process for both project one and project two. They're providing input on constructability, the scheduling, and then the pricing. That all leads to the end of the road, which is a guaranteed maximum price. So for project one, we've moved through the design and Apollo has developed their guaranteed maximum price, which is their cost to construct the project. The GMP, in order for that to function the way that it does, it includes a contingency. So the GMP is the maximum price the owner will pay. That's based on a contingency that's incorporated into their contract. It's for their use, and that is based on a risk register. I WILL SHOW A PICTURE OF WHAT THAT DOCUMENT LOOKS LIKE. THAT RISK REGISTER OUTLINES ALL OF THE RISKS THAT WE AS A PROJECT TEAM, JUB ENGINEERS, APOLLO INC. AND THE CITY TALKED THROUGH AT VARIOUS STAGES OF THE DESIGN. included risks on the register you also notice there are risks that are crossed out those have come to pass we're past that point so we're able to retire risks as as we go through the design and then when we get to the gmp we essentially evaluate what what risks are remaining and i guess a final note on the cmgc approach that this is not a one-size-fits-all this is not a it's The city is not looking to use CMGC for all projects. It's really a case-by-case basis, and the value that CMGC provides is a way to manage risk in the construction project. Some projects are best suited for a design-bid-build approach, which is the majority of our projects. In this case, CMGC is a great fit. Uh, so Apollo's GMP, this includes their costs to construct the project. Uh, this includes the $32,000 of contingency and that's based on the risk register. So this use of contingency is only for the items in the listed in the register and it requires review and approval by the city. Um, any. contingency that's not used would return back to the city and is deemed a savings to the city. So there is a possibility that at the end of the project, if you have unused contingency, there could be a deduct to the final GMP amount. And of course, if there is an item that comes to bear and the actual cost is more than the listed amount in the risk register, that is the CMGC's risk to bear. That is the risk that they're taking in this process. This is taken from their GMP, so this is a breakdown of what their costs are. This includes the 3% contingency for CMGC for Apollo. Through the design, I mentioned it's really a team approach with JUB, the city, and Apollo. At each stages of the design, we've reviewed the costs, and there's a cost reconciliation that happens between all three of us, but primarily between JUB as the city's design consultant and Apollo, and it's a reconciliation of... jub's estimating and apollo's so that is a bit of that check and balance ensuring that okay if you're you're showing a million more than than we have estimated have we maybe missed something uh and and either way if if the contractors estimate is low that that could be a place to look uh concern that maybe we're not picking something up and vice versa if it's if it's higher what costs are maybe you anticipating that we have not factored in so it allows for that open collaboration and that back and forth.

And what is an owner procurement assignment?

That reflects the BDP, the Belty watering press that we purchased and a G that's the stuff we bought. Yes. The stuff we bought.

Thanks.

Minus the amount that we've already paid. So we have paid one vendor an amount of money to get submittals and get equipment started. And then the balance of that contract is transferred over to Apollo. So Apollo's GMP, I guess that's an important note that that includes about almost $900,000 of equipment. So different tools to address different risks. We have talked a lot about the CMGCE contingency, that is only for the risks in the register. I want to talk briefly on the city's contingency. So this would be to address any changes in scope of work, any additions that we might have if we maybe add an additional valve or two. That would be addressed out of the city's contingency. This whole process also results in a decrease in what we're requesting this evening. So you will see that the city's requested contingency is significantly lower than what we typically would request for a project. And that just speaks to the management of the risks through this process. This wasn't intended to be legible, but wanted to just show what is in your council packets. And this is... An outline of the risks that we have, the gray lines are risks that have been retired. The light blue are the ones that have been carried into the GMP. Um, to answer one of the questions, there are no active risks, so nothing is currently active, but all the light blue lines have been carried into the GMP as we start construction. If those were to come to fruition, then we would have at least a roadmap and how to deal with that. An example of that would be on the belt filter press. So the new equipment that we've ordered, it will. It will be installed on existing foundations. Most of that foundation is below grade. We can't see that today. We believe it was installed correctly 15 years ago and is in good condition in the event that once we open that area up, and similar to opening up a wall in a house and you find something, if we have issues with those foundations, what Apollo has identified is a minimum price, a minimum cost, and a maximum cost. So $5,000 to a maximum of $10,000. And to my earlier comment, if that cost is, if the actual cost of remedy is more, that is Apollo's risk to bear. There's also on each of these line items, it notes a probability and most of these are low probabilities.

Why does that, doesn't the legend say that that color is retired? Why does it, in the actual contract, somewhere else in the packet you have that same risk register is listed in a way that I was able to read the legend at the top of it. Oh, I think I found it. It says retired and incorporated into GMP. So that whole cost is already in the contingency that's inside the GMP, correct? Okay, so then why does the contract refer to them being able to use that money for risks that are on the register if they get retired from the register and that puts them part of the GMP, is my question. I guess I would expect to see them active if they were ones that they were able to, what would be an active risk then, I guess?

So this would, I guess this would be, in that definition, this would be an active risk that could come to bear during construction.

Okay.

Everything in the light blue. My understanding is on the All the gray items are items that have been retired. One example of an item that's in the gray column or the gray row was DEQ, Department of Environmental Quality review at 90% and timeliness. We have since achieved and accomplished that review. So that risk as a potential delay to the project has come to pass.

Okay, so what would be an example of something that's active on this spreadsheet if this is the risk register?

So the foundations would be an example of if when we start work at the facility to prep for the equipment that's coming and they start excavation around the foundation and the footings, and they expose those footings and at that point, if let's say that the foundations, three of the four are crumbled or we determine there's no rebar actually in those foundations, then we would need to address that and this line item speaks to that as a potential risk.

And that line item would become active active there's no active incorporated into the gmp there's high priority active not incorporated into estimate and active not incorporated into gmp estimate retained by owner so i guess my question is everything that's light blue on this list is already incorporated into the price that we're talking about so what would Why is there an option for active?

Something unforeseen, is that what you're saying?

Well, I guess, like, the legend says active. Like, so why does that exist on this legend? And, like, what would be an example of that? Because, like, it says high-priority active not incorporated into estimate, but if that's an identified risk, what is that? Or I guess then it doesn't matter. The blue ones are what we would, are what's incorporated into the, into the price and we don't have anything that we foresee that we haven't given a price to and put in the GMP?

Correct. And if you add up all the items in the blue and what they have for maximum cost, it's significantly more than the contingency that they're asking for. It's probably double or triple. So that is another, they're taking a risk and some ownership and recognizing that that is their risk to bear, that if say all of the blue items did come to pass, that would be significantly more than the $32,000. The city would not see a request for any more than $32,000. Apollo would own that.

Okay, I think I understand that. I think my confusion reading the packet was these all technically say that they're retired.

That may have been a typo. We had some revisions, and I may have also missed that in trying to clarify the question, and that is something that we will clean up in the future.

Your explanation makes sense. Just my understanding of those words, I guess, is just like a regular understanding, not a project manager understanding. Okay, thank you.

It can be more clear, and I think that was a note that we passed along, and as we continue It makes it nice that we're able to work through this and then incorporate those changes and hopefully into project two. So jumping to the overall summary with Apollo, with the 3% contingency that city would be requesting for city's side of it, total request is on the screen. Shifting gears a little bit to the JUB contract amendment. So this was, you had a few questions about just the background of the amendment and I hopefully filled in and maybe answered some of the questions here. So this contract amendment is to add construction management services for project one. The original contract with JUB was for design only for project one and two. we've been taking this approach and adding the cms services later on in design especially for more complex projects that span a long design time that allows a fully complete design to help inform what we actually need for construction management so we envision a companion amendment that would come in the future when we bring the gmp for project two And that would be likely next spring in 27. A summary with JUBs of the total request is just the $344,600 for this amendment. And then this is a summary of the project one costs. This is essentially the contracted costs for project one to date.

Mr. Arbini, thank you for pointing those out. I think I get confused and subsequently difficult with you when we ask for an amendment, which makes it sound like it's something new and unanticipated, but it's really part of the planned process. And so it's helpful to see that we already have a contract for this. We're amending it to move on to the next step. That was all planned for and budgeted for. We're not, like we also called our water Westwood water. distribution phase oh yes that's a change order not an amendment but sometimes those feel like the same thing that was unanticipated and this is part of the process so I appreciate you delineating that for me absolutely and then I don't have to be grumpy which is not fun for me either so I would just say that my concern is that anytime there's a GMP contract there's risk that's priced into it that

much like the insurance business, is unlikely to happen. So you're paying for things that you're not likely to get. The advantage is that it won't be more than that. So you have a predictability in there. But if I said, all right, I'll fix your sprinklers, and you said it can't be more than $1,000, or what a GMP would be, I'm going to price in. Well, what happens if I need to dig up the pipe? I'm not likely to need to dig up the pipe, but you're going to pay a certain percentage of what a dug-up pipe is going to cost because you're pricing in the risk. So I really don't necessarily like seeing GMP contracts because I know that the contractor is going to price in. We're overpaying a little bit for the convenience of knowing that it won't be more expensive. And I just wonder if the other way, like the Westwood project we saw where there's a contingency built in and then come back with a change order is a better approach. What's your belief on that as to why we went with this approach rather than the other approach?

Can you just clarify if that's an accurate perception, what he's presented?

So the CMGC approach, alternative delivery, is not the lowest cost option. You are correct that there is a premium to employ that delivery method.

He's specifically asking about GMP, though. Our gross cost is all factored in. Right. Maximum price.

So I can understand. And I think that is why we look at a delivery method for each project and where it may be appropriate. We tend to look at a CMDC or an alternative delivery, like a design build process where you have a complex project, high dollar value project. complexity in operating around existing facilities and while that is one of the risks uh... is paying a premium and cost that may not come to bear it's an evaluation of a trade-off of risk and for city staff in in recent time this is our second project that we have done with the CMGC delivery approach uh... the first project was the outfall improvement and But all intents and purposes, that was a success. It was a very complex project, working in the river and multiple permitting agencies. That was the amount of risk that the city otherwise would have taken on under a design-bid-build approach. And similar with this current project, we evaluated the ability to prioritize project one, so the ability to have our design engineer and a CMGC and take a work package like project one and prioritize and move that along and, and get that out the door first while still working on other work packages. It, it makes it more challenging to do that under a design bid build where you might end up with two contractors working next door to each other in the same, same plant. So those are some of the things that we've factored into taking this approach. I will also say, uh, that checks and balances and that cost reconciliation that we have tasked JUB engineers as part of the CMGC process that they are evaluating, they're costing the design as we go along and it provides a bit of a check. It's not just whatever the contractor says it should be. It's evaluating their work.

Sure. I mean, in my day job, I price out contracts. And sometimes when I have a client that asks me for a GMP, I say, OK, but just know you're going to overpay. Because, for example, if they say, I need a three-year deal. I don't want any wage increases for any security officers priced in there. And I don't want the health care premiums priced in. I just want to know what's going to be flat for the next three years. Well, I'm pricing all those things in there, and I'm thinking, well, you know, it might be 12% on the health insurance, but I'm going to price in 15 just to be sure. And if it comes out it's 8, then the client overpaid, right? And it's not really a transfer of risk to the contractor. It's really just... Because the contractor is then transferring that risk back to the contractee and saying, okay, I've priced that into my contract. And in the case of the outflow, like what ended up happening? Did we, did the contractor end up paying more than the contract GMP or did we end up overpaying a little bit for the peace of mind of knowing that it wouldn't have been more than that?

Yeah. The net effect was a deduct. We had some things come up on the risk register, and that made it very convenient to point to those items. So when that occurred, we were able to say, well, our risk register actually addressed this issue directly. And in that instance, I believe that worked greatly to the city's benefit and in their favor, because the actual cost to remedy likely not reflective of the cost listed in the risk register. And for these types of projects, what we are buying with the cost premium is that management of risk. We've had some challenges on various projects, especially through COVID, through the inflation that we saw, rapid inflation, and that led to market delays, increase in products, and And in some cases, some disputes with a contractor that this is beyond my control. I didn't bid it this way. And with this structure, we're able to have those conversations in this risk register. And that really breaks out, okay, let's talk about long lead times and delays. And what does that look like if that happens? It really insulates the city a bit more in Contractor, you committed to doing this. We understand there's a negotiated fee and there is a premium. We've tended to be clear about that throughout the whole process that there is a, in the CMGC process, because you are selecting the most qualified contractor, but you're bringing that individual or that company on board from the start of design and they have a vested interest in the project too so there's a value in they're intimately involved with the design of the project and they've influenced it by the time you get to a gmp where they're committing to take that on i'm still uncomfortable with it but let's move on i think in your example it's a great example of

of if it works against you, but as far as overpaying for that security, but as you all know, I mean, in your example, if the rate of insurance increased up to 18 or 20%, then it would work in, you know, back in the other favor. So it is one of those that, you know, you look at the long list of complexity and dollar amount that's assigned, which with each risk factor, And then you say, well, what am I comfortable with taking on, and what am I comfortable with paying a bit more in front to kind of alleviate that? And that's the game. That's the gamble right there is how many of those risk factors, if they did come into play, would push our price up astronomically because of the difficulty of procuring some of those items, but also just the overall expense of taking care of it. You know, in this type of project, I am definitely in favor of that because of all of those factors. But your point is well taken. Like, in an ideal world, we wouldn't encounter risk factor, and it would all just come into play, and we could just bid it as what we actually have to pay for.

Yeah, and I think maybe an example where we are installing a – sewer line maybe a pressure sewer line and it's point A to point B 500 feet that's fairly straightforward in terms of construction CMGC is not an appropriate fit that is a very clear example where you're paying a lot of extra costs for something that even encountering unknowns when you excavate you can deal with that there's a pretty clear process to address those changes and you will likely be saving money than going through a CMGC process. But that type of work is also very straightforward. You're better off going through a competitive bid pricing or a bid process where you have maybe 10 contractors that are all competing to win that work. That's where the type of delivery method is really suited for certain projects. It's really dependent. There's differing points of view on that, but I think it has its place. I think this is where I left off the summary for project one. With everything to date and what we've contracted for, it's about 3.1. Project two is the significant, is the bulk of the project cost. So our total solids handling project is estimated around 40 million. That includes project one and two. We will have more information as we continue to work through the design of project two. This is something new. This is a new process, and I'm unveiling it here as it relates to our capital projects. As of this year, 2026, we're working on an improvement to our system and how we account for equipment that we retire from as a result of our capital projects. So items that we would surplus or dispose of. And there's no request tonight for this. popping it up here because it will come up again in project two where we do have large assets significant assets that will need to be retired and so our approach is as part of our request when we bring a contract for construction that we would also build into that we would be asking council to make a declaration of the surplus items so we would have a list of those items and then those will be addressed either through salvage to the owner or disposed of and outlined according to our surplus policy as well i guess something to note on project one so no significant assets there's some small components like grading and valves some duct work that we'll have that will likely it'll either be returned back to us the city or disposed of by the contractor depending on value and is the goal here by bringing this into future

Requests to create an efficiency in the process.

You have to come back to us and ask about disposal later Yes, and that we actually track it through finance so it also allows us to close the loop at the end of the project that These four pumps are no longer in City's possession or in use that those have been retired so this I think will help in keeping that list current and instead of an end of year reconciliation. Excellent. So next steps. So following an award tonight, the contractor will bid out the sub packages of work. So part of that CMGC is bidding for electrical packages. That does include a competitive bidding process there. Project 1 improvements for construction are estimated to start October and then would be completed by July. We will have a SCADA programming contract. Not certain what that looks like at this point for scope and magnitude, but that will be informed as we move through Project 1, and we're also working on Project 2 concurrently, what those programming needs will be. And then continuing with project two, design, we just had a 60% design workshop, and so we anticipate a GMP for that phase of the project in the spring. With that, I'll answer more questions.

All right, ready for a motion.

I move to approve the water reclamation facility solids handling improvements project one guaranteed maximum price agreement with Apollo.

Second. Motion and a second for the discussion. Roll call, please.

Mosby?

Aye.

Luca? Aye. Stiglitter? Aye. Plew?

Aye.

Molloy? Aye. Ziegler?

Aye. Motion passes. On to item E, water reclamation facility solids handling improvements construction management services amendment with JUB engineers.

That was included in that, right? Yeah, wasn't that in there? That was.

Are we taking that with one motion?

No, I'm breaking them up. I move to approve the Water Reclamation Facility Solids Handling Improvements Construction Management Services Amendment with JV Engineers. Second.

Motion and a second. Further discussion? Roll call, please.

Luca? Aye. Stuglieder? Aye. Plough?

Aye.

Molloy?

Aye.

Ziegler?

Aye.

Mosby?

Aye. Motion passes.

My gosh, you had me so nervous. I was like, then I don't know what I was talking about because I thought we were talking about that contract amendment.

We are on to new business. Item A is the fiscal year 2027 Intergovernmental Agreement for Prosecution Services with Rathdrum.

Mayor and council, I did not have a presentation plan for this. It's just a renewal of the Rathrum contract. We'll also have the Hayden prosecution contract that'll be coming shortly. Did receive a question asking for a bit more detail on the methodology. And the question specifically was asking why isn't it more in line with the wage growth projections at 6.6%. And so I wanted to kind of address that. So this applies to both the Rathrum contract and the Hayden contract that you'll see shortly. Basically the short answer is we don't necessarily just take last year's contract and add the wage increase. Personnel costs are a major part of the calculation, but the methodology is a little bit broader than that. We also start this discussion much earlier. We meet with the jurisdictions near the beginning of the year, April, March, to talk through that so we don't know those budget numbers when we are negotiating this increase. We also take the existing year's budget, where we think the budget is going. And then we use the calendar year for case counts to update those numbers. So as far as the methodology. goes so we we take a estimated cost of basically the prosecution division in the legal department using the personnel assigned to the prosecution plus the operating costs that support that work and then we take an allocation of the workload of how many cases how many infractions how many misdemeanors we use sort of a historical average since we started With our case management software, we're able to pull those numbers fairly consistently, but we've only had that for about the past three years. So each year we get a new sort of updated case count that gets put into the spreadsheet and that gets averaged out. So we're up to, I believe, three years of data. that we're using to count those through 2025, because again, the last calendar year. So that gives us sort of an estimate of the jurisdiction's sort of fully allocated share of prosecution, and we use that number as sort of a benchmark for our negotiations, but not really like as an exact invoice, like this is 100%, you need to pay exactly that. Why? Because there is some unavoidable sort of imprecision in the model. Cases are different. Two misdemeanor cases can require dramatically different amounts of attorney time. And so what we don't do is we don't have our prosecutors and staff sort of track billing time and track it down to that. So lucky. Down to that increment. And so largely because the administrative burden of doing that would negate any benefit to doing that. So also a significant portion of our prosecution costs is already fixed. We have to maintain the sort of prosecutors and support staff that we have. in order to have the capacity to cover all of the different court calendars. We have 12 courtrooms and I think 22 judges in the first judicial district. So that's a lot of places to be for only three prosecutors to be in. And they're not even all in the same spot. So courtroom coverage is important. We have to have enough attorneys to cover all the hearings and trials. that are occurring at the same time as well as being available for police consults when needed, leave and other sort of operational needs. So the question isn't really as simple as whether these jurisdictions pay 100% of their mathematical allocation. It's sort of whether or not the contract amount sufficiently covers the burden that it creates and makes a meaningful contribution to to our processes and department that leaves Post Falls taxpayers in a better off than they would be without the agreement. And so we think that it does that. It's really these other jurisdictions giving us a subsidy for what we would already have to provide. We have been.

We would already have to provide services to them even if they didn't pay. We would help prosecute their crimes that happened in their jurisdiction.

No, we would already have the sort of fixed costs allocated.

We have to be at the courts and have people available already. We're just increasing our efficiency.

But there's no way we would have as many if we didn't prosecute for Rathdrum and Hayden. We might still have to have three, but they wouldn't be as busy, right? Like they wouldn't need to be at those hearings because they wouldn't be prosecuting them.

Sure. Okay. But while we have that capacity, that's where we see it as a benefit to offset that cost for post-fall tax payers.

So the overhead wouldn't change just because the workload changes.

Right.

It seems like it's less than one FTE is what we're charging them, right?

Mr. Luca, I can't hear you. What's that?

I can't hear you. Oh, sorry. It looks like it's less than one FTE is what we're charging them, 8207 per month.

It's actually probably equivalent to about one FTE, actually, for an assistant-level prosecutor. In fact, when we... Initially took on the Hayden contract. That's when we came with a additional prosecutor so that taking on that Hayden contract actually actually allowed us to get another prosecutor to Have that additional coverage.

So by bringing in that income and then is this a fully loaded cost of Like a portion of the building and electricity and all that stuff or is it just basically the staff time and expense?

It is It is an estimated cost of the prosecution division, our operational budget, and our personnel budget for the legal department. So it doesn't have the sort of building overhead costs. I know we're working on that and are getting to that point to be able to associate some of those costs. But really it's just taking our operational lines, allocating, estimating sort of, what amount of those lines goes to the prosecution side of things. And then it's really taking the post, it takes our post false case counts, averages that, determines what our sort of estimated cost per misdemeanor is based on our own numbers, post false. That gives us a wag at what a, general misdemeanor costs and that's around $676. And then infractions, we take that at a I believe one sixth of a misdemeanor as far as the effort and workload that goes into that. So we get some cost estimates and then we take the jurisdiction's numbers, average those out, and then allocate those costs. Does that make sense?

But every hour that one of our staff members spends on anything is increasing 6.6% everywhere in the city because their wage is going up. So every hour that any of our prosecutors spend on anything for these other jurisdictions becomes 6.6% more expensive because their wage is going up that much per hour. So if we don't recoup that cost, In comparison to last year's contract, the residents of Post Falls are subsidizing that 2%, like slightly, 1.8% maybe, because just the staff costs, like the hour of staff time costs more, unless your data shows that we're predicting less hours worked in some capacity that would account for that 1.8 percent but maybe my logic maybe there's another version to my logic here but that's just what i thought when i saw this like people are 6.6 percent more expensive every hour

How do we not recoup that? And there may be a different methodology to tying it more towards the exact time allocation for each individual attorney's wage and staff and everything else. That is just not the... Not the methodology we've been using, in fact.

I don't think that we need to know exactly how many hours they spend. We know that no matter how many hours they spend, it's 6% of whatever that is.

Right, but a lot goes into sort of that cost per case. So it's not just personnel cost, it's operational costs as well.

I think that would only strengthen my argument. I'm only looking to recoup wages. Does the rest of the, I would ask that if at all possible, we go back and renegotiate this because what I see at least in the numbers is the city of Post Falls subsidizing any of the hours that these employees spend on cases that are not Post Falls cases, unless again, we're looking at decreased time for those jurisdictions in the coming year from this year. If other council has thoughts on that or don't agree with that.

The question is what percentage of the cost is labor? Because for example, if the cost of a dairy worker goes up 5%, the cost of milk doesn't necessarily go up 5% because of all of the other costs that are involved in bringing that milk to market. may not have increased, some of them may have decreased. So in this case, the question is, are those other costs significant enough to offset that 6.6% increase in wages, and are you confident that we're not subsidizing, to Councilor Stiglitter's point, we're not subsidizing Rathdrum and Hayden in a future discussion, who should bear the full cost of prosecution of their cases.

Yeah, I actually see it more as a value added. I think that, again, we... we would have these overhead costs we would have this overhead personnel costs already and I think we are building in a way to get at least some of that recoup some of that expense that we have the capacity to take again these these get updated each year and we do we are trying to move them to closer and closer to that sort of mathematical 100% but that's not just something I mean we just started doing this three years ago hitting them with a sort of 50% budget increase would sort of, the other jurisdiction wouldn't be able to just do that in one year, if that makes sense. So we are working towards them covering more and more of that sort of fully loaded cost, but that's been an incremental thing that we've done over the past few years. Before we had case numbers as, you know, easily trackable as we have them now. This was really just an, you know, back of the napkin kind of math to try to come up with a decent number so we've been we've been doing this for a a while and i think we've i think we are getting better and better at recouping that those costs and i think that will continue on each year that we do this so so it sounds like you're saying that yes we are subsidizing a little bit but there's value to that because if it gets too expensive then they might hire their own and then we'll lose that and then we'll end up paying more

That's true.

I think that I think there's there's some truth in that.

But then we wouldn't be operating efficiently if the argument is that we would have three prosecutors and the overhead no matter what just to prosecute post falls cases and we have the capacity to take on two other jurisdictions then there must be some inefficiency or somewhere that we could lean and in having three employees or three prosecutors and the support staff. I guess I just don't, I, I don't know about that. I like the idea of looking for other avenues and I appreciate that, but I just don't see how we can get around the idea that no matter what their time is more expensive than a 4% increase. So, yeah, I agree.

I think, I think, um, if I'm understanding you correctly, especially when you're mentioning that the Hayden contract allows to bring on another full-time prosecutor. And I imagine the FTEs are not exact, so you have a caseload perhaps that is 2.3 FTEs to cover that caseload, in which case bringing on another full-time would not make sense except for an additional contract. Is that what we're discussing as far as the added value?

Yeah, I think it's subsidizing sort of what we already need for coverage, if that makes sense. So the other jurisdictions are helping cover the cost that we otherwise would have to bear.

So I think we're getting to the root of the question. Why would we have to bear that cost if these employees already have margin enough in their caseload to add to other jurisdictions?

I think I understand the question. So we need the, The way the sort of caseload is divided up among the prosecutors, not each attorney sort of handles sort of what they do best, if that makes sense. So our assistant city prosecutor handles primarily all of the infractions. So she's able to work through the infraction caseload and adding those sort of incremental additional infraction caseload helps alleviate or it's it's the same amount same same type of work it's just that sort of repetitive efficiency of being able to do this the same sort of case over and over and over and so you'd still have that you would just have less less caseload, if you will. But you would still need that number of attorneys and that coverage for the courtrooms and just being in 12 courtrooms at one time.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but here's my perception. When you go to court on, and I worked at the prosecutor's office for a little bit doing limited licensed work, a lot of arraignments and misdemeanor stuff and infractions. So when that happens, judge calls a docket. There's 30 cases on it. but only one person can be sitting at the bar at a time. Having that one prosecutor going through the whole caseload for all these jurisdictions means you don't have to have three guys up there switching seats on the bench all attending court at the same time. It creates an efficiency across all three jurisdictions that might have infraction cases on the same docket in the same courtroom. Instead, you have one guy handling the whole docket in the courtroom for everything in front of the judge. Is that all fair and accurate?

That is a fair and accurate statement. They do not divide... The court does not divide the dockets by jurisdiction.

Sure, and we're paying that one person 6.6% more out of the city budget this year. But we are not asking for that much more money from any of those jurisdictions.

Yeah, and we always kind of play catch up with this, right? Because, again, these numbers are based on our sort of previous budget and our anticipated budget back in March. so we didn't know what the end wage increase was going to be but when we renegotiate this again in April or March of next year that number gets sort of baked in and we can again estimate and budget moving forward using the updated case numbers and it's sort of a cyclical fashion if you will to try to capture that and We, while we may be behind a little bit, I think we, with the sort of built-in increase to getting them closer to covering more of that sort of fully loaded cost, I think that gets us there.

What was last year's increase? What was the percentage of last year's contract?

I do not know what the percentage increase was from last week.

More or less than 4.4?

I believe it was a little more than 4.4, but I could be wrong.

So of the $600 per misdemeanor and $100 per infraction, how much of that is salary? I don't want to put you on the spot, sorry. Good job, Joe.

I don't have... I don't have that exact number. I can tell you that of that cost, about 500,000 is what's allocated for the prosecution personnel. I don't know what the operations total is.

The increase last year was 6%. Okay, thank you.

And we increased wages 4% last year?

but but we I think we had planned for a Seven or seven per seven half percent increase that year and so that was baked into that number So that's where I'm going with that is it is kind of the key factor or one of the key factors that of that $600 for a misdemeanor say three hundred of that is the prosecutor salary So if that salary went up six point six percent But the other three hundred dollars and operational cost didn't go up at all then over the over the cost of a misdemeanor, the increase is 3.3% because half of that wasn't wages. So if we then bump it up 4.4, we're ahead, right? So how much of that number is wages is kind of the key to your concern.

Well, I think I did ask that in the beginning. I asked if there was somewhere that we were saving 1.8% or 1.2% and I didn't get an answer for that.

Well, even if you're not saving anything, if $300 of it is operational last year and it still costs $300 this year, that's not a savings. If the other 50%, which is labor, went up 6.6, then you average that 6.6 out over the entire cost, 50% of that. So it basically makes the entire cost went up 3.3 of the 600 bucks.

How much of the contract is wages as well?

That's the key factor here. The other bit here, too, is that we do take the case averages into account. And so any time that there is a... increase in Post Falls cases or a decrease in Post Falls cases, that changes those numbers as well. So for example, our Post Falls misdemeanor counts went down by 100, I'm sorry, our Post Falls infraction counts went down by about 100 infractions over the last year. And so that changes that average and that changes that that amount as well as to how that gets allocated. Okay.

Field, I guess I'll also ask about Hayden. Are we covering all of Rathdrum's prosecution or is it just a certain allocation of their matters? Because this is kind of getting to both what Councilor Stiglitter said and also Councilor Luca where if we're not increasing this enough to cover everything, But if we go back and renegotiate more, they might just take it in-house and we lose a source of revenue. In order to harmonize that, I'd like to know how much are we actually doing for them?

So we handle all of their misdemeanors and infractions?

All of it. They don't do any.

That's right.

Okay. So I think we're in a pretty good spot to Count Zerstigler's point to make sure that this is I mean, if in your opinion it's enough to cover all of the overhead, you know, I don't have anything to believe otherwise, but if we're thinking that more of this is attributed to staff time than it is to any other overhead costs, then I think renegotiating it to match the increase in wages might be prudent.

If I might, Mayor, a bit of history. So when I started as city attorney a few years ago, forgetting the exact amount. At that point we were doing the prosecution for just Rathrum. Hayden wasn't on the scene at that point and our contract was pretty simplistic. It essentially said here's how much it is annually and that number stayed the same for years without any increases. That was largely because having that contract allowed the city of Post Falls to have a second prosecutor which they needed at the time. Without that contract we didn't have the ability to add that second prosecutor. Stepping forward a few years, when we took on Hayden, that also happened to coincide with two new magistrate courts being added in Kootenai County. We no longer had the ability to have enough attorneys to cover all of the courtrooms where they needed to be at one time. Case count is one thing that we look at, but it's also just the sheer number of courtrooms that you have to be in. We didn't have enough lawyers to cover all of the dockets at the same time. So that's where we took on Hayden, and that allowed us to essentially pay to add the third prosecutor. So the cost to the city of Post Falls are largely being underwritten by the two other jurisdictions. The contract doesn't capture all of that cost, but as Field said, we're getting to it. He's taken what I put together, the formula I put together that he's refined was essentially I took all of the operating costs that included the sort of what is the vehicle cost for our prosecutors, what's the depreciation amount, angling on that, build that in as sort of so we can capture the full cost of providing the prosecution services to these two jurisdictions. So we build a model that essentially based on last year's operating costs, Here's what the full cost is based on a per case cost. Field has refined that with what were the costs last year and what's our projection for next year. Our projections are never perfect, but as Field alluded to, that gets caught up the next year. It's kind of like you're always a little bit behind the cycle, but you're going to catch up and capture that added cost the next year. We can certainly try to renegotiate this. I would suggest to you that maybe the way to accomplish that would be wait until next year because staff has invested a bit of time and political capital in negotiating this contract for this year. If you're interested in using a different formula, I would suggest that maybe we have a workshop on how the formula works, what's captured in that. If you don't think that that's sufficient, that can then arm staff going into next year's negotiations without burning capital in relations with other jurisdictions that we don't really need to burn at this point.

I just don't think that we're in an environment where fiscally or politically where we can just kind of say we have this ambiguous way that we've been doing it. We don't have a lot of data. There's all of these unaccounted for costs that may or may not go up. So this is the percentage that we negotiated. It's what we have. I think that we have to be judicious about it, especially when we're looking at when we have increased taxes to kind of catch up and when we're trying to balance that against increasing our own staff's wages. and just looking at the numbers, it doesn't obviously match. And so I think that that's more to the heart of my request is like this needs to be more doled out. And I appreciate that maybe there are some overhead costs that aren't increasing, but like, my electricity hasn't gotten any cheaper, nor has my gas, nor has doing any work on any of my cars. So there are some overhead costs that categorically are not staying the same. So I guess if if the desire and the judicious thing is to approve this contract tonight with the understanding that maybe some more obvious, I mean, it might be obvious to you, but something that we can clearly look at to understand how we came to this number next year or when the Hayden contract comes, that would be helpful for me to be defensible to what we're doing. Yeah.

I mean, this does account for nearly $200,000 in revenue into the general fund, so...

My inclination is to trust you and not argue with you about it, but the numbers just, anyway, didn't add up for me.

I think that's where the heartburn is for me. It's just not conclusive enough for me to say, yeah, we're covering all of our costs, and I appreciate the background on the formula of how you arrived at this. It does sound like we're getting much more accurate data as the years go by. Another question about this, though, about the system to which we derive our values, Is it similar to other cases where we have a fee for service that has to be defensible as a, this is a value of something that we're providing that.

No, it's an intergovernmental agreement.

So there's quite a lot of flexibility in that. Um, so my suggestion is again, I think not to kick a dead horse, like the, the, the data is getting better. I would like to get a little bit dialed in, but if we are to air, I would rather air a little bit high, uh, from the protection of the city tax funds, rather than saying, well, we think we are, and I don't know if that's reasonable or not, considering what you just said about always having to catch up, but it would definitely give me a little more confidence in saying, yeah, we have a good contract, as representing post falls.

Sure.

Is there any estimation that the increase in burden from Rathdrum has remained the same, increased, decreased,

The burden of recovering, that is. Rathrum's case counts actually are really stable. So it's a fairly stable source, I guess, of capacity. Okay.

My own thoughts are that this is definitely worth pursuing for revising the formula. I think we're at a point in the budget cycle where every jurisdiction has already approved their budget, and it would be very politically difficult to go back to them and say, like, surprise, we're going to pull the rug out from under you from what you expected. I think this is probably better as was suggested that we do a workshop on this and then have some maybe more defensible numbers for next year. I know the county and Hayden have been fighting over law enforcement issues and can you they've been trying to get the county to defend specifically how can you justify all the charges and so if we're going to go back to them with an increase we have to have all of our ducks in a row we have to have very good documentation because they're going to expect that from us and they should and i think that's probably more time than we have right now

I agree. I was going to make the same point less eloquently. I think that we do, they have already submitted their budgets, let's move forward with this with the caveat that we're going to take a look at it and that maybe make notice to those jurisdictions that they can expect next year that it may go up significantly more as we try to recapture the true cost of providing these services so that we're not subsidizing them and i understand it sounds like they're kind of subsidizing us too in a way not necessarily with the raw cost but with the fact that if they're using up you know half of an fte and we're using up half of an fte but they're paying 0.8% of an FTE, then it's working out well for us. But they should just be on notice that we are gonna look at this and that it may have a larger jump next year than previous years.

I would move to approve the fiscal year 2027 Intergovernmental Agreement for Prosecution Services with Rafter.

Second.

Motion and a second for the discussion?

Just a one comment that is, you know, I'll be in support just in reliance on staff's opinion that this is a adequate reflection of at least what actually covers the costs and echoing what the other counselors have said. I hope we can have a more precise data moving forward, but I'll be in support.

Roll call please.

Duke leader. Aye. Clue. Aye. Malloy. Aye. Ziegler? Aye. Mosby? Aye. Luca?

Aye. Motion passes.

Thank you, Mayor and Council.

We're on to citizen issues. This section of the agenda is reserved for persons wishing to address the City Council regarding city-related issues that are not on the agenda. Is there anyone who would like to speak? Come forward. State your name for the record, and you have five minutes on the timer.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. My name is Nick Berger. I'm a resident of Post Falls, and I'm standing here tonight speaking on behalf of my father-in-law. He's a disabled veteran who relies on this community, but because of his health and physical limitations, he's unable to be here tonight. Before it was abruptly eliminated, my father-in-law was one of the local residents receiving the city's utility subsidy program. He had already gone through the process of submitting his verification earlier this year, and the city had approved it, meaning that work was already put in to do exactly as the city asked for, and the city approved it. For a city with a multimillion dollar budget, a $20,000 total cost for this program is a minor line item. But for vulnerable residents, fixed income seniors, and disabled veterans living on a tight, strict budget, This subsidy was a crucial lifeline. It was a targeted measure to alleviate the highly disproportionate burden. When utility bills rise, wealthy households barely notice. But for a resident of fixed income, a higher water or sewer bill, means a direct choice between basic sanitation, necessary medication, or even groceries. With his food stamps were decreasing this year, this $52, I think, a month, it's gonna cut into his food budget. To label a small dollar safety net that ensures local veterans and seniors have access to clean water as a wealth transfer, fundamentally misconstrues the purpose of municipal government. Ensuring that our lifelong residents, the very people who spent decades paying taxes, risking their lives to protect and build the infrastructure we enjoy today, can afford basic necessities. It's not a handout. It's a core mandate of public infrastructure management. What makes this decision truly jarring is the stark contradiction of how this administration defines proper government roles in resource allocation we're also told this program needed to end to protect city resources and staff time Almost simultaneously, Post Fall has chosen to absorb the administrative labor, office hours, liabilities of the federal government, and partnering with ICE under the 287G program. How can we argue that lack of municipal resources to verify income for a handful of struggling seniors and disabled veterans but we magically possess the resources, staff time, and command staff to enforce federal immigration law in our city. A $20,000 safety net is not ideological overstep. The spending of local taxpayer-funded police resources on federal jurisdiction is a massive fiscal and structural contradiction. I urge the council to look past political rhetoric and recognize the real disproportionate stress that is placed on our most vulnerable neighbors and return Post Falls resources to supporting the stability of our own residents. Thank you.

Thank you for coming to speak. And I will stand by my stance on this, that it's not the proper role of government to forcibly take money from one person and give it to another. But I certainly sympathize with the situation. I know it's a difficult one. I think community organizations are best equipped to be able to provide that type of support. And that's where I would encourage everyone to look. Anyone else wishing to speak? Seeing none. Moving on to council comments. Anything from the council?

have a question about this exact issue about the process that we underwent to cancel these applications from what the gentleman spoke it was I'm assuming an annual application that was filled out was that calendar year or how do you know how that okay so I mean whether or not I agree with the mayor's opinion about what this governmental action is used for, if it's used appropriately? Was there any kind of notice given as to cancellation of this subsidy? How did we accomplish this?

I believe notices were sent out on September 2nd to the approximately 30 individuals that were on the program.

So notice was sent out that it was going to be canceled or it is canceled?

Yes, it was going to be canceled. I think it was a 30-day notice, so it's canceled effective October.

Well, there I think I would definitely have an issue. I mean, I understand if it's something that we've been looking at even from a legal aspect, I understand that, but I also think that we owe due process to the citizens that are relying on this to allow some kind of planning. Whether those applications are denied in the next renewal year, that's fine. I think it does kind of act as a contract, at least a contract of trust between the city and our residents that they are qualifying for this, so it's really disturbing to me that we kinda just pulled the rug out on these citizens in this particular case. I do, again, would like to reiterate, it's not necessarily that I disagree with the decision, but for what we do, it's not only what we decide, but how we then enact it, and I don't think it's fair in this particular case.

My understanding was that we were simply not renewing the program and that it would continue until January.

We can double check on the dates. I do not have a copy of the letter. This was happening with Warren, I know, was responding on it. It was happening while I was in Portland, so.

And so, sorry to put you on the spot, but is it, has the subsidy actually ended or was it just the notice that you? Okay, okay.

His budget had just further constraint.

OK. So maybe it is a notice by the end of the year. We're not super clear on that?

I will say he did call the office, try to get further clarification. He had some issues. He didn't get any real answers on that, I could understand. But as you understand, I didn't mention my speech. This also comes at a time that the VA just sent him notice that they've been overpaying his benefits by a few dollars a month. So now he's going to have to give the VA back a few hundred dollars on top of this.

Yeah. 100% I agree with you and I just want to be clear about the process that we are taking and I understand the city's position on this but I also want to make sure that we're doing it right for your is your father or father-in-law so if we can get some clarification on that notice letter on what that actually said I think

We can get with Jason tomorrow and verify what it said. And if the desire is for it to end the first of the year, or as the program rolled, if it was calendar year, not fiscal year, I'm not sure. OK.

I second your sentiment, Councilor Zegler. I don't think it should just be pulled. A month is not enough notice.

I agree. That was never the intention with how we were handling this. So if that's how it was, then I think we can correct that.

Seems reasonable.

I would support a correction if it was only a one-month notice. That's not enough time to plan. I mean, that's not even enough time to find a new apartment that's cheaper. If that was the option a person was taking, you need more time.

And I completely agree with Councillor Ziegler on that, that it was too abrupt if it's not going to have enough time for people who don't have a lot of options to find another solution. I'd also ask if perhaps we should workshop the idea in the future of having a voluntary program where people can round up their bill or or check a box to say, I want to give an extra $2 a month for those that need the assistance, and then we can voluntarily do it. Because I also agree with the mayor that it's not the proper role of government to forcibly make people pay for somebody else's basic needs. At the same time, I think all of us would agree that we would voluntarily help people out if we could, and we have the means, so why don't we make that an option perhaps? I know there would be staff time involved in that, and that was one of the concerns with this program, and the administration of that. I don't know how feasible it is, but I think we should explore that.

That's a good idea. I like that idea.

So thank you for bringing it up.

to the bottom of it and make sure that if you don't mind, can you leave your, if you don't mind leaving your contact information just so we can make sure we follow up with you.

Okay. All right. Any other comments from the council? All right. Saying no further business. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you.