City Council - Regular Meeting

Council will slowly call this meeting to order. For the record, it is May 26, 2026 at 4.30 p.m. We'll begin this afternoon's work session with roll call attendance.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Councilman Kavanaugh.

Here.

Councilwoman Strader.

Here.

Councilman Whitlock.

Here.

Councilwoman Little-Roberts. Here. Councilman Overton. Here. Mayor Simison.

Here. Next time up is adoption of the agenda. Mr. Mayor. Councilman Overton. There are no changes to the agenda, although we need to be flexible with item 10, as the Plummer family may not be here until 5.30 p.m. Other than that, I move we adopt the agenda as published.

Second.

I have a motion and a second to adopt the agenda. Is there any discussion? If not, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. You guys have it. And the agenda is agreed to.

Next up is the consent agenda. Mr. Mayor. Councilman Overton. There are no changes to the consent agenda. I move that we approve the consent agenda for the mayor to sign and clerk to attest.

Second.

I have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda. Is there any discussion? If not, I'm favorably satisfied by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed, nay. You guys have it. And the consent agenda is agreed to. No items were moved from the consent agenda, so we'll go on to our resolutions. Council, the item before you is a resolution appointing Terry Dennington to seat five of the Impact Fee Advisory Committee. Terry is not a stranger to anybody up here and needs, frankly, no introduction. But what better to have, I'm not gonna say Terry's the only resident Meridian who reads our budget, But she's the only resident who comes to our budget meetings and actively participates and understands what we are actually doing here in the city. And as a member of our Parks and Recreation Commission, along with her budget knowledge and engagement, I think she makes a great addition to our impact fee advisory team. With that, I move for this resolution, but I'm happy to stand for any questions should you have them about Terry, why she's here in front of us.

Mr. Mayor.

Councilman McCabin.

I don't have any questions, just appreciation. Terry is a great servant of our community, and I'm really pleased to see that this is going to be brought forth, and I'm happy to make a motion if it's in order, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor, I move we approve resolution number 26-2588, appointing Terry Dennington to seat five of the Impact Fee Advisory Committee and providing an effective date. Second.

I have a motion and a second. I'm approving resolution number 26-2588. Is there discussion? If not, all in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed, nay. The ayes have it. The ayes agree to. Terry, any comments you'd like to make? If so, you've got to come up here.

Mayor and all of the council members, thank you so much for your support. I really appreciate that. And I hope that I am a good addition to this impact committee fee. I just think it's going to be really interesting. I've actually read some of that in the past, so I think it'll be interesting to learn more about it and if there's been any changes or anything like that. So thank you so much for your support.

Thank you, Terry. Appreciate your service. Okay, with that we'll move on to department reports and, as was noted, we'll need to move on past item 10 for now, but we'll move on to 11 which is valley regional transit overview and fiscal year 2027 funding requests and we'll invite. Elaine Craig up to lead us off.

Well, thank you. It's great to be here. VRT is always excited to come and talk to you guys. We really appreciate your collaboration, especially in this tough budget year. And we're trying hard to help make that budget year a little bit easier for you anyway. So let's see here.

Sorry there.

So today I want to talk about the things that we have done this year and been successful at, the performance in Meridian, most of which has been good, but there's one place that we think we can improve, and then a look ahead at 2027 and how we think we can do that, and then our funding request. So our recent accomplishments include three main areas, capital projects, operations and service, and communications. So in our capital projects, some of you were at the ribbon cutting at Main Street Station. It was a really fun event. We've added four electric chargers to the station, which a couple of things, they provide us real resilience in the electric buses. making sure that if something happens at the base, we have another place that we can charge those buses. It also adds resilience to the downtown grid in the city of Boise. We have two different transformers on two different grids, and now if they need to, they're able to move a little power around. If you haven't been down there, we'd love to have you come take a look. We refreshed all the finishes and have a really energetic new artwork. We've been doing lots of bus stop improvements. There's three major ones that we completed this year. We have 72 more slated now that we've inventoried all the bus stops. That includes 13 in Meridian. Those stops are ones that especially serve two or three routes so that as we do those stops, they're helping more than others. And... We already have shelters scheduled for two bus stops, but there's three more. Overland and Blackmarkland currently has no shelter and likely could fit one on the existing concrete pad. Records Way and Village Drive currently no shelter. It's one of the busiest bus stops in your system. And Records and Village Way, again, no shelter. And again, a very, very busy stop for you. So we're looking to figure out the project that we'll put together that will bring those forward for you. We did a real-time information pilot. We now have chosen a vendor. So as we do these bus stops where we have the capacity in terms of power and so forth, we will... be putting in real-time information displays whenever we do a shelter. That way the riders know exactly when the next bus is coming, which will be great. We purchased all the advertising benches, and while this year that was a bit of a lift, ongoing from here we should make a lot more revenue on the advertising. We were making just a tiny bit. and the outdoor advertising company was making all the rest. So now we own those benches and we get to sell the advertising. We have a new transit contract with MV Transportation. We have found since we hired them that they've got a lot of experience in helping some of the really gnarly little issues that we've been trying to figure out for a time. Probably the most important of those is on-time performance. And through that, we're eliminating missed trips that our former contractors just never could quite figure out. We've also commingled paratransit services with services to older adults. And in doing that, we've increased ridership without any extra costs to anybody. This says capital projects, that's a mistake, I apologize. On the communications and outreach side, We have a youth ride free pilot program. City of Boise and Blue Cross Foundation are funding it for the next two summers, but it's available across the system. We have not said, oh, if you live in Meridian, you can't do it. So your kids are available. We already have 1,100 kids signed up. Our goal for the entire summer was 1,000. So it's clear to us that this was something people have been hoping for. So options for kids in Meridian. You could ride the 24, the 42, or the 45 to Town Square Mall, or the 24 or 45 to the Village, 42 from 10 Mile Crossing to Wahoos, the Ball to Wahoos, Village to the mall, 10 mile to the village, and 10 mile to Wahoos. So we think there's real opportunity maybe for some kids who otherwise are stuck during the summer because their parents work full time to have access to the kinds of things that we know keep them healthy and out of trouble. So we're kind of excited about that. And we also started a partnership with city Boise with a couple of their housing developments it's a past program for those residents and we're looking to expand that so we're now looking in meridian at what might be the possible housing developments that would be interested in this. We're excited about that. Supplemental services, we're serving AC Boise. We're seeing enough ridership that we think it's worthwhile. What it also does is unlocks advertising and introduces new riders to the system. And then, again, we helped host the CTAI. or Community Transit Association of Idaho Transit Day at the Capitol. And we'll continue those ongoing discussions with our state leaders about funding and how we all frankly are suffering a bit from lack of funding. So in 2027, here are the things that we want to focus on. We have a A large number, but smaller dollar amount of capital projects. The Main Street Station project was $22 million all by itself, so it takes a few to add up to that. The Gen Fair boxes are really exciting. Our current boxes are obsolete. They don't take all payment systems. These will be whatever's in your pocket is going to work. It'll take about a year to get them all up and running and get the software in place. But once it is, we're very excited about it. We've completed that bus stop inventory and are starting the plans for how to do those improvements. And we're focusing on infrastructure that will make the ride better and also help the drivers. You may have heard about the accident at Orchard and the connector. That one is a place we knew needed some infrastructure and investments, and now we're even more clear about Thankfully, no one was hurt, and the bus is going to be okay as well. We're also doing work on State Street, which doesn't directly impact you, but also gives us the example of how to do these infrastructure improvements, especially the signal timing and some of those things that I think ultimately will really help in Meridian. And then we're doing more improvements at the orchard maintenance facility. On-time performance has been a challenge the last couple of years. While congestion has really hit this valley, I think, for the first time in a way that people haven't seen before, it's really impacted our on-time performance. You'll see this in a slide in a minute. And that negatively impacts reliability and discourages ridership. So we've done two things with these new contractors to work on that. The first, this on-time performance really does impact the 45, the 40, and the 42 because they run on the arterials where the congestion is worse. And so we've actually increased... the run of a few buses and put the travel time for that bus at the right time so it can stay en route at the right time without increasing the time between buses. So the buses will still come as regularly. In order to do that without impacting the budget, we've reduced just a handful of runs where we had really low ridership, typically very early in the morning or the very last one at night. So less than one rider per run at some point, it's probably the one that makes sense to make the rest of the system work better. We know that, even though I'll show you in a minute, the increased ridership in Meridian that we can do even better. We've designed a new outreach program called Route Reach, which specifically looks at each route and the things that might increase ridership and performance on that route, then does outreach around that. So we're very excited. Again, those three inner county routes in Meridian are prime for this. And we're controlling costs, just like you. We've had a lot of headwinds this year on inflation in fuel and parts and all kinds of things. So we've been trying hard to reduce our overhead expenses to make up for that. introducing a new management system for our parts and inventory for a bus maintenance facility that we think will be more like the on-time warehousing that so many companies have gone to and we hope will reduce costs in the immediate. We've also reduced non-productive hours. We used to have drivers wait at the base and then be called out if there were problems. We now have them staged around the system. If there's a problem, we can call that driver pretty quickly. So we reduce the deadhead time. And we think there are other ways to commingle. Like I said, we were able to introduce new seats without any cost. We think we can do more of that. And we're exploring lower cost service models, especially on demand and those kinds of systems. So specifically Meridian, this is the on-time performance. So as I mentioned, it's not great. Our goal is 90%. On the inter-county routes, I think we'd be really, really happy with 80%. The challenge with these, that they're a long distance, so if they do get stuck in congestion, if there's a bad incident, it really just kind of blows it out of the water. And it's highly variable. So as I noted, we're working hard to see if we can overcome that. We've already seen some improvement. I don't have enough trend to tell you for sure, but the early trend is that it's going to work. We'll lean into that in the first week of June on a more formal basis. Ridership, on the other hand, is doing quite well in Meridian with a couple of exceptions. You can see the pine, and we'll talk about that a little bit more in a minute. While Mustic Maple Grove isn't fully within Meridian, it certainly serves Meridian destinations and is partly within Meridian. That's been a very popular new route. And then the inner county routes have, for the most part, done quite well. The Caldwell Boise Express, again, was not only impacted by congestion, but also some construction. So we had some closed stops and some other things. We think that one's going to recover if we can maintain the funding on it. And as you can see, the 45 really has been a rock star. So East Meridian, West Boise routes in general, that includes the Route 21, which goes all the way from River Glen grade school to Town Square Mall, but it's all the same part of the valley and all of those, the ridership on all of those is improving quite a bit. We've seen a big decline on the 30 and that little bit on the 40 that I talked about. Specialized rides in Meridian continue to be strong the senior center served a big number of people rise to wellness While we've got some headwinds there with the Medicare cuts. We've seen a 50% increase in demand We didn't have enough supply for that, but we think we've with help of the health care center sector Stepping up. We think we figured that one out. I And beyond access, you guys are about 17% of the regional total population. You get 19% of the beyond access rides. Well, that doesn't sound like a big percentage because Meridian is the second biggest city in the region. It's a big number. So you guys are punching above your weight there. So recommendations. this um let's dig into the route 30. so when we did our big service change in 2024 we integrated the route 30 and the route 45 and they go back and forth but the route 30 is a shorter one so the destinations aren't as numerous we've learned that many of the folks have switched to the Route 45 and quit riding the Route 30. The combined ridership between the two is 48% higher than before the service change. So we think it was still the right thing to do. But clearly the Route 30 isn't performing. It's our lowest ridership route. And what we're going to suggest to you is that we actually suspend it and explore better ways to provide the service to the area that it serves. We're pretty sure that most of the writers who are writing it will either switch to the 45, whatever's left of it, which will still be quite robust, and or be eligible for Beyond Access. And so we... We think that that's a way to save you a little over $100,000. And we think it's the right thing to do. I wouldn't usually say, let's suspend a route. But it's tough budget times for everyone. More importantly, I want to do the right thing in terms of service. And this is the right thing, we think, in terms of service. Now, this doesn't mean that we'd never talk about this again. We'd hope that over the next year, we do a robust process with our planning staff, your planning staff, public engagement, and see if we can understand a better way to serve that ridership and come back to you next year with a proposal that we hope won't cost as much as the old Route 30, but will still provide some of this ridership. And in the meantime, we'd like to maintain all the other services because they are doing quite well. Todd serves on our board for you, Todd LaVoy, and he knows that for the first time, we've done a five-year plan just like ACHD and the state have always done. In it, we looked at a projection over the next five years of what things could cost In that plan, which was adopted by the board, including a vote by your member, we projected it would be a little over $900,000 for a request for you this year. Frankly, not a very big increase, still less than a 4% increase. But a little bit of an increase instead if we suspend the route 30 and excuse me stand there out 30 we can save that hundred and $12,000 and our request would be below 800,000 and still maintain all the other services. beyond access the senior service your special assessment is a little higher than some other jurisdictions because you do lean into supporting those and it has paid off we've seen big ridership on them so this would be our request this year We hope you'll take it in the spirits it's intended, which is let's figure out a way through these tough times together. We'll do our part, and I hope you can figure out a way to come up with yours. I know it's a tough year. I know budgets are hard. I know having been on that side of the dais, the difficult choices you'll be facing. If we can do this finalize the budget with those numbers we can we can maintain those high performing services will suspend the route 30 we would recommend in October. Move forward with those bus stop improvements on those higher performing routes. And examine strategies to read that reestablish service in that service area in the future. And with that I stand for questions.

Thank you. Council questions.

Mr. Mayor? Don't have a question for Elaine as much as a comment. I've appreciated over the past several months, we've talked a couple of times about not just what we need to do as a city, but budgetary constraints that we're going to be facing in the fall of this year. And what I really appreciated in talking with Elaine is the fact that she understands it's not just the city of Meridian, it's many cities around us are suffering from the same shortfalls of what used to be to what is. And I appreciate what she's brought forward. I think it takes into effect a lot of what we've seen. And we want to continue to work with Valley Regional Transit. They're I think they're a very important part of how we move people around this valley, how we reduce vehicle trips through this city. And I appreciate all the work she's put into this and the fact that she's come together with a funding amount this year that's gone down substantially from last year, taking that into account.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor.

Councilman Schroeder.

Yeah, I agree. I appreciate the sensitivity around budgeting at this time. I think a lot of different entities are feeling the pinch and us included. Looking forward, what are some of the options that you would consider to serve the people that were served by Route 30? Like, just give us a high level sense of what what could that look like?

Sure. You know, I'm sure you've heard that Canyon County is looking at all kinds of options. We experimented, frankly, with on-demand service in Canyon County starting in 2018. If you'll remember back, TNC's Uber and Lyft only started a little year before that, not quite a year before that. And so this really was kind of new territory. And then the pandemic hit. And so that experiment, if you will, kind of sat there for a few years. Over the last three years, especially in the last two, as I've been digging into it, we've learned that transit agencies all over the country are also experimenting with on-demand and how to do it well and how to do it efficiently for a cost that makes sense, a cost per boarding. That's more in line with what a TNC cost would be. We believe we've come up with a proposal in Canyon County that would rival that cost, about $12 a boarding overall. And we think as we look at Meridian, if... especially if we could get the 45 to an all-day route so people could rely on it all day. But even without that, the area that used to be served by the 30 could potentially be served by some on-demand that could be quite efficient and move the people that need to move to the places they need to go. And so that's one option. Certainly another would be As we grow, one of the things I didn't mention, of course, you guys are the heart of the rail system that we're talking about. I couldn't be more excited that our offices and your city hall are in the heart of that system. And so I think going forward, especially what we'll want to look at is making connections to downtown so that if, when, I'm going to say when that rail becomes a reality, people will be able to get to it. I think on-demand probably is the place that we will lean right now, but we really want to work with your staff and with your public to understand what they'd like.

Councilman Capper.

Elaine, I'm not going to put you on the spot, but I think it would be beneficial for council to see the amount of trips that have started and ended in Meridian, probably on 45 and 42.

Yes, and I'm looking to see if I have those in my notes. If I don't, I will get them for you.

And it would be good, I think, also to maybe compare and contrast that against maybe the last three to five-year trends. So I know since you've really come on board, there's really been a lot of emphasis on reengaging riders and making ridership easier for our citizens to take advantage of. Would love to see the progress on that. I think that's helpful as we get closer to our budget sessions.

I will get you that. I did not put it in these notes that I see. But as I remember it, as we were looking especially at the specialized transit of the number of that 19%, 12% were all Meridian, and the other 7% touched Meridian. I believe, if my memory serves me right, that the... intercalating routes, the 45 is actually a little stronger than that. The others, because they span a little bit longer, are not quite. But we'll get you those.

Thank you. Maybe to piggyback off a little bit, do we have any idea how many unique riders would be impacted on a daily basis in Route 30 with this conversation? How many people are going to reach out to Councilman Kavanaugh, myself, Councilman Overton, whether they start in and around the village or they start in and around 10 Mile or along that pathway? How many people are we displacing by this recommendation?

Well, the total yearly ridership at this point is, I'm going to ask Stephen because I think he's been digging into that.

Mayor, members of the council, Stephen Hunt, Chief Development Officer at Valley Regional Transit, and the average daily boardings on the 30 are about six to nine. And it runs at the same periods as the 45. That's why we're fairly confident that those who use the 30 today should be able to shift to using the 45 without a lot of impact.

And if it was...

One thing that we would absolutely do if you all decide to go this way is we'll go out and put our outreach people on the Route 30 and talk to the people riding, let them know what their options are. If they're older adults or disabled, they could also move to the Beyond Access system, for instance. So we'll make sure they all know what's happening and what they can do.

Thank you. Council, any additional questions at this time?

Mr. Mayor.

Councilwoman Roberts.

Mr. Mayor, Elaine, no questions. I just want to say thank you. I know that this has not been easy, especially the last week or so. And so I just want to say thank you for all that you do. And I greatly appreciate your work on our eventual rail and just keeping our people moving as best that you and your team can.

Well, thank you. I appreciate it. You know, I'll make the same offer to all of you that I made in Canyon County, and that is, you know, I care about Meridian. I don't just care about Valley Regional Transit. So if there's a way that I can help as you're working through these budget struggles, given my experience over 20 years in Boise, I'm happy to do that. I think more importantly, Your spirit of collaboration has been so helpful for me and my staff in being able to come to you with a really positive, we think really positive proposal that we hope, you know, I'm trying to keep the wheels on too until we get some legislative fix. And so maybe together we can all go down that road. But thank you. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Okay, seeing that we did not have our item 10 folks here yet, we will move on to item 12, Mayor and City Council Compensation Ordinance Update Discussion. Mr. Neri.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. What you have in your packet is a request from legal to prepare an ordinance for your consideration for future compensation. As many of you know, and for the public's benefit, every election cycle for the last 20 plus years, we've... gathered a city committee a variety of people from the city the chamber various commissions various people that are engaged with the city in other ways and have them come together and discuss compensation for mayor and council both salaries as well as benefits and then bring a recommendation forward to the council at the time and any changes they would recommend towards those It can be kind of clunky. It can be a little awkward sometimes for both the citizens that participate in it as well as councils in the past. And so we were asked to simply craft an ordinance that would align that similar process to our other processes that we have for all compensation. We have three current methods of what we do for compensation for the various work groups. The methods are very similar, varies a little bit for particular reasons, but We do the fire union collective labor agreement in one year cycle. We do the police and their compensation structure in another cycle. And then we do a general employee evaluation, market analysis, market study. And then with that also is an annual review for cost of living or any other increases that are necessary to keep those competitive in the marketplace. We use different metrics on how we come to those. evaluations and how we decide what makes the most sense from a compensation standpoint. We have a comp committee that looks at other benefits for the city as well as a benefits committee that evaluates those as well. So what this intended, if the council is interested, is this would just align the mayor and council into the same work group cycle as general employees. So each time the general employee cycle comes up for evaluation and market study and analysis of the compensation structure, That we would do the same with mayor and council. And again, process that the same way we do every other type of position. It would kind of take some of the awkwardness out of it from the citizen standpoint or for future council standpoint, just aligned in the same method and methodology that we do for everyone else. So anyway, we were asked to bring this forward to see if you would want to do it this way and pivot from the way we've been doing it to something that's a little bit more uniform and consistent over the years for the future. And so I can answer any questions you might have.

Thank you, Mr. Neri. Council, any questions?

Mr. Mayor, not so much a question as a kind of a follow-up to that. Since I've been sitting on the council, and I know there's people up here sat on the council a lot longer than I have, this item's come up twice in both times. we declined to advance a pay to the city council. I think both times we advanced pay raises to the mayor's position, but not council. And I understood the reasons why. This last time that we as a council heard from the committee that we brought on board to recommend what we should do, the second part of that recommendation had to do with what we're looking at today. And what I think we've accomplished now, By reversing that is we would be enacting an ordinance that would put us on the same playing field with all the employees. They get a cost of living increase, we get no more than they do. If it comes time that we review each employee's pay, we would look at that as reviewing mayor and council pay as well. But it would put us on that routine cost of living increase that they get instead of having nothing going forward for these number of years, I think it puts us in a far letter far better place and I think it puts us. Basically, I think sitting up here in the dais it puts us on the same level playing field with over 600 employees and I think that sends the right message.

Other questions comments.

Respectives just a comment. I appreciate it was trying to be proposed here and I actually really like the philosophy around that. I think my. Hesitation about. It's not even a hesitation. The more concern is the when. When would we do this? Is this something that legal staff would want to bring back next week, next year, next month? What's the timing for something like this?

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, the timing is your own. So, I mean, we can certainly, again, I think, and I don't, Ms. Hoops, I don't know what the general employee cycle is. I don't believe it's this fiscal year. So it's probably a year or two from the market change. The annual increase obviously is the same. The only thing in the state statute that governs compensation, pay compensation for mayor and council, is simply it has to be done at a certain point in time before the election cycle occurs. But other than that, our intention would be to bring it forward in any time you want, public notice, public hearing, as we normally do on most ordinances. We usually put them on for public hearing, for public comment as well. So whatever your timing is, it's up to you.

Mr. Mayor.

Councilman Kavner.

I think I've been, as a council member, been part of more of these than anybody. And I also recognize that I'm pretty vocal in my opposition of taking compensation. It's kind of been my general philosophy. I would maybe ask the council to take a breath on this and say, if this is the path that we want to take, then maybe we and the compensation committee should take a big step back and say, if we were establishing a city, a city of 150,000 people, what would be the baseline salary for a mayor? What would be the baseline level of compensation for council? It's been my observation that when the compensation committee has got together, it always kind of starts with, what do we think council will support? And I understand they're trying to bring something that we would then embrace. And I understand it can be frustrating to sit on a committee and plan and bring a recommendation, and two times in a row, the council says, thanks, but no thanks. So I think that what is being proposed here is is a good path forward. I just want to make sure that we're setting the baseline for what that compensation should be if we were launching brand new, because essentially there will be no additional bites at the apple to if there's concern about a disproportionate amount or. taking a look at what the real time commitment is as a council member. The whole time I've been on the council, nobody on the compensation committee has ever asked me about time, effort, things that we do. It's always been, this is kind of what we think it is. We look at other cities, other jurisdictions, and what council could approve. So I'm not necessarily rushing to this, and I appreciate Mr. Neri kind of letting us know it would sync up with When we would do general employees, we have a little bit of time on this. So I would just say if we're generally supportive conceptually of this philosophy, great. Let's ask the compensation committee to come back with a recommended baseline. And then that can be the topic of conversation for the council. I, again, as one who's been pretty vocally opposed to taking compensation, I like this philosophy because I think it's predictable and consistent. I'm going to be very open to any recommendations if the compensation committee would come back for what a baseline should be for mayor and council. So that would just be my only comment is determining when we should do this and making sure that we're establishing the right amount for what a salary should be for the mayor and council moving forward.

Mr. Mayor, I appreciate that input and as I reflect back on last July when this issue was before us, I think that's exactly what the compensation committee tried to do was establish a baseline after evaluating what what they had looked at in other communities uh... and i was comfortable voting to support both salary increase for the mayor as well as implementing the cost of living adjustment that would tie in with the general employees. I was not comfortable with the full evaluation of what our baseline was. I did feel it was kind of a random number and here's another couple thousand dollars. I was more comfortable with agenda item number two in that proposal, which was let's tie it to the employees. So my feeling is very similar. If we can get to a point where we can establish a baseline, I just don't want to wait four years to say, okay, that's the next cycle for general employees. In four years, we'll do an evaluation, establish a baseline, but then with the election timelines and everything else, not be able to implement something for another four

four to six years um i don't want to extend it out that long mr mayor that's my camera mr nary we will have to take a version of this up next year prior to the mayor and city council elections is that correct so mr mayor members of council customer care if we want to change it

then you do need to change it prior to the election. I think it's 75 days. Prior to the election is when you have to set what the salary is. So I agree with you. I mean, I think there's a couple of different things. And normally for our compensation, we use an outside consultant. They do look at markets. Markets vary by the types of jobs. So I would think mayor and council will be similar in the sense that you don't look at the same market for engineers as you do administrative assistants. But you're going to look at markets. Whether you start with the baseline of what exists today or some other baseline based on market analysis of community, community size, demographics, those types of things, that's a fairly standard way of doing it. But certainly I would suggest you do it between now and next year so that you're in front of the next election cycle at the latest, if not implementing this now. Again, if you want to help drive – The analysis part, again, that's maybe the conversation with our consultant to say, how would you do it? Maybe that's where the conversation could go.

And maybe Mr. Mayor, to put maybe a finer point of that, I would like us to maybe have an answer about this prior to next year's budget hearing so that way we can, you know, there's always kind of a coming after the fact. We've set the budget and we're coming back to adjust around compensation. It gives us a 12-month clock to work towards a recommendation that we could then input into. I guess that'd be the fiscal year 28 budget. So that's kind of where I'm thinking.

Mr. Mayor. Councilor Schroeder.

This has been a topic that has frustrated me off and on for a couple of years. And I'll just share openly my feelings about it. I do feel that this issue was used as a political football at times in a way that didn't make a lot of sense. And I've always just voted for what I thought was right around it. I applaud the consistency. I think that that makes a lot of sense. My hesitation at this point is really around our budgeting process. And I'd like to see, you know, if we have a five-year balanced CFP. That's important to me. I wouldn't feel good about increasing city council or mayoral compensation in any way if I don't think that we have a path toward getting back to a balanced five-year CFP. That's a philosophy issue for me. I think anything like this that moves us closer to some sort of a consistency and away from these wild swings makes tons of sense. But I just need to see that information. That's where I'm at.

Well, the one thing that I'll admit, I had to pull up what I believe is our city code. So always interesting trying to get to it. But I was trying to remember what we did last time we did this. And, you know, We did set the, and I might only pull up the marriage one. The marriage is set for the changes for 2026 and 2027. And then moving forward, it does appear that that one is tied to cost of living Thereafter, you know, so in the context of, you know, do we feel like the mayor's position was adequately compensated? I give you my two cents. I felt it was and tied it moving forward. And so that part is in some ways been addressed. And so it really is what is the. council you know if you didn't go make any more changes to any ordinance that would be in effect and there would be there is an escalator of whatever the cost of living fair employees is as of fy28 so i think whatever you're doing you're really looking at fy28 at this point in time just from a practical standpoint the process that we already agreed to the ordinance that was approved that people were elected under for a two-year time frame so the fy28 i think is when you are looking at the Any potential dollar change that would go towards council, or if you decide to go change what was already put in for mayor as well, that's when you would likely make that call appropriately. But I think part of the conversation ultimately is, you know, you did have a recommendation from the. citizen compensation committee. And it'd be very interesting. I'm not going to ask Debbie to come up here and give me her perspective on whether or not she think Gallagher would do a better job of trying to determine an appropriate, you know, compensation level for elected officials when you look inside the market, which is what our team already did. And frankly, the dollar figure is so small in comparison between where if you look at Eagle and Star and Boise, you're not talking hundreds of thousand dollars in sway. You're into a couple of thousands of dollars of market difference. Even if you said Boise was your high end and Napa and Caldwell, and you want to be somewhere within that framework, it's a very small true number about that. So if I was to make a recommendation to counsel on this, if you felt like taking this approach, I would look at reverting back to what the last compensation committee established, which is what they established for the mayor, setting that as your base and put an escalator moving forward and maybe asking the compensation committee to evaluate it in five years from now. Kind of go that direction. Not this next time the employees, I don't know it has to be done every three years. Because I don't think once you reset it, think it's going to stick in a good place for several years unless something dramatically changes so long as you're doing minor adjustments with cost of living that to me would at least give you a base to look at if you look back at what the last compensation committee recommended and see how you all you feel about that recommendation compared to asking gallagher for quite frankly you're going to spend more money on gallagher to have them go do the assessment than likely agreeing to what the compensation committee recommended. In my opinion. Right, wrong, or indifferent. But that's where I would at least say, look at what was suggested, look at it ongoing, give it five years before you go back and you make any recommendations from where we currently are, understanding the cost of living is the dollar figure for the next five years once we get into the FY28 budget cycle.

That's my two cents.

I'll leave it at that for now.

Mr. Mayor.

Councilman Neri.

Mr. Mayor, the other thing I would suggest, and again, it's a very strange animal when trying to evaluate compensation for elected officials compared to other general positions anyway. So I do think it makes sense for the cycles to be the same. But I think the mayor hit it on the head. I mean, even asking our current contract service to give us some examples, they're going to probably use pretty similar that this committee did too. The local markets, the local folks. Again, you're not doing recruitment and retention for elective positions the same as you do for engineers or lawyers. It's just a different animal that we're talking about. that baseline, as the mayor said, when we set that at the last time with the committee, they are trying to look at kind of what the local constituencies are comfortable with, and not just what this body would be comfortable with, what they perceive the public is comfortable with. But again, it's hard to analyze. The one plus I think the committee we've had in the past for our city has been probably the most relative to the jobs is because one of the things we've always had on this committee is a former council member. So we've always had somebody who at least understood the job that all of you do and the time it takes to perform it and the effort it takes to do the job properly, which is a little bit different than trying to just do a general analysis as you might do in a normal market study. So i i think the mayor's right if you look at the current wages that are in code and look at that as your baseline right now you do have a an increased um amount built in and that's to avoid the bigger jumps that's always been the biggest concern is that once you wait every two to four years to make a change now the jump becomes instead of four or five percent it's fifteen percent or more just to catch up to the marketplace so I think the mayor is right. If you waited a number of years and even wanted to expand the scope of time, we could do that. We could change the wording in here to do that as well. So we're starting with a particular year, not the next cycle of 27, but in 29 or something like that. If you want to do that, that's certainly you're able to do that.

Mr. Mayor, just one last testimony. I'm going to call it a small comment because for those that don't know the numbers we're talking about and what it would have as an impact to the budget, we're seriously talking about six people sitting up here getting an annual increase if we followed the same increase that General Employee Scott of under $3,500 if it was a 3%. We're not talking about a big impact to the budget. We're talking about something that normally would almost be passed on a consent agenda because it's so small. It's a very insignificant increase. We're not talking big salaries and big raises. We're talking about something that's actually quite small as an impact.

Mr. Mayor.

Councilwoman Roberts.

Mr. Mayor, Council, if I remember right, the committee last time, it felt like they put a whole lot of work into it. And so if it's possible that we could get their report back, I think that would be a great place for us to start that conversation again, because it really felt like it was pretty much on point and provided exactly what we're trying to have here. I don't know that they need to even meet again, maybe, to see if there's any revision to it, but I think that would be a really great place to start with the information that they gave us last time.

I'm sure Mr. Neri can arrange to re-provide that information to city council. So as a refresher on what was recommended in that context. And I'm sure you could figure out if that's what was recommended for the 26 and 27, whether or not you used those numbers and or did the cost of living or didn't. You could showcase what those numbers are. I don't want to pretend like I can do math on the fly anymore, so I'm not going to. Try to guess what a 3% increase would equate to on anything, but and then. Council member shall you. Have conversations about wins at the right time to come back and have the next dialogue on this topic that work and was got the least will have their information and refresher and. Go from there.

I got that Mr. Mayor.

Councilman Locke.

Can I just get clarification on when the next general employee evaluation will be? We're doing CLE right now. Where do we fall in this?

And I believe it's police next year and it's the general employees in the following. So technically it'd be the fiscal year 29 is when you would have the general employee adjustments that would be looked at.

And Mr. Mayor, just to reiterate my prior comment, I'm concerned about waiting three years to do that, to find what the appropriate amount is. And again, more comfortable on the COLA side of things, but the faster that we can get to what an appropriate base amount is, the better in my mind.

Yeah, I think when it takes effect is one part. Determining the number is one thing. When something would take effect would be a secondary to that. They don't have to be done in the same year. It may not appropriately be done in the same year. All right. Thank you very much. With that, I don't see our guests yet. Okay, then we will go on to Ada County weed pest mosquito abatement presentation follow-up discussion. Council, I'll kick this off very briefly because I was not here for your conversation that you had. But I know this was a request to come back and maybe allow, give Council all the time. You had the conversation, you maybe even have heard additional things happening out in the community. I know we had at least one resident respond to everybody on these topics, but you may all be receiving your own communication. So I'd like to open this up for, based upon what you heard and what you know and what you've been hearing, what seems appropriate for the city moving forward?

Mr. Mayor. Councilman Robertson. It seems to me as we've been listening, each week we hear more and more people talking about rats. I mean, from the first mention of it several months ago, it was the rumor of rats somewhere in the county and different places, especially if we went farther to the north. now it seems like you can't escape the discussion about rats and how far they're moving through our community community meridian and the communities around us and the rural county around us um and i'll let vice president little roberts speak about what she just discovered she posted for all of us uh next but you've got people out there actually tracking rat sightings now because they're so prevalent throughout our community and it's gotten to the point that what I'm afraid of is nobody is standing up and taking the lead and I think we as a city need to stand up and take the lead and draft this letter if this is the appropriate letter and get it started and hopefully get other communities in Ada County and even beyond to follow suit to start to put pressure on the right people to do the right thing and step up and take care of this before it becomes a much bigger problem throughout the valley.

Mr. Mayor, that's one of our arts. Mr. Mayor and Council. Yesterday, I just happened to run across the Channel six article. So I sent out the the article to my fellow council members about the tracking of the rats that a gal has taken the time to create this Web site where you can. actually track sightings and things. I sat down with one couple that in, and I didn't bring my notes. I apologize. I meant to that in the last, I believe six months have on their own property trapped. He was almost at 30. So 27, 28 rats. And I think that, and has video and things like that, that show that people have them for quite a while before they know they're there and generally because they travel at night they travel like instead of going across your yard where a camera will catch them they go around the perimeter and things like that so when they realized they had rats they had a lot of rats so i think that it's going to just continue to escalate quickly now that we know they're moving through the county and into the cities. And I think that I agree with the best way to handle it is to encourage the county to move forward. They're used to dealing with situations like mosquito abatement and things like that. And so I believe we need to proceed with maybe giving that encouragement for them to do an assessment and and take on the project of our rats.

Mr. Mayor, I mean, I think that was some general feelings coming out of the presentation we heard from the county is that waiting till January and asking the legislature to try and address this is, again, already against a ticking clock. So I'm in full support of us sending a letter to the commissioners, asking them to declare an emergency declaration and begin the process to address this issue on a countywide basis.

Okay. Well, I know you do have a draft letter that was prepared. We can utilize that and get everyone's signature on that letter. I think in addition to the conversation with the county, there's also still a conversation with our state government, whether it's our governor and our legislature, and we can continue to press those two arenas as well, either for a temporary help from the state so that the governor may or may not be able to do, or a long-term that the legislature may need to help also do that. So we'll continue having those dialogues, but we'll start here and we'll share this with the other Treasure Valley Partnership members to see how many of them we can get to follow our example and asking for the county to take some action and work through our partners through that process. Okay, then we'll make it so. Thank you very much. Okay, it does look like we now have our item 10. Folks were able to make it. So I'm going to move us back to number 10, which is the Brighton Day Park IPRS Citation of Merit and invite Mr. Sidaway to the podium.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the Council. I'm really excited for tonight to be able to do this and prepared a few remarks because I didn't want to just shoot from the hip. So but tonight it is my privilege to recognize a group whose vision and heart helped turn an extraordinary dream into a lasting gift for our community. Many of sorry. Many of us in Meridian have come to know the story of Eva Plimmer, an incredibly young girl whose courage inspired us all. Even while facing an unimaginable battle with an inoperable brain stem tumor, Eva dreamed of creating a place where children could challenge themselves, build confidence, and learn that they could overcome obstacles. That dream became Eva's Dream Ninja Course at Discovery Park almost exactly a year ago. You may remember that ribbon cutting was right before Memorial Day last year. While this project was inspired by Eva, it also took an incredible dedication and leadership to bring it to life. Shawn Plimmer, the entire Plimmer family, and their nonprofit, Brighton Day Park, and Abby Louie, who was our primary contact through that process, worked tirelessly to honor Eva's vision. Through fundraising, community partnerships, volunteer coordination, and unwavering determination, they helped rally our community around something truly special. Last month, we were able to nominate their organization for an award through the Idaho Recreation and Park Association. And just a few weeks ago, at the end of April, we received the IRPA Association's Citation of Merit Award for a partner organization. And tonight, it's my honor to present that award to Sean Plimmer, the Plimmer family, the Brighton Day Park Organization in recognition of their partnership with us. So if I could have you guys join me up here at the podium for just a minute. I'd like to welcome members of the Plymer family and members of the board, including Abby Louie, who helped us get to where we are today. This is an award, the award that was presented to me a month ago, and now I want to pass it on to them. But it says, Citation of Merit partner organization presented to Brighton Day Park, Inc., honoring the Plimmer family's significant contribution to bringing Eva's Dream Ninja Course to fruition in Discovery Park, creating a lasting legacy for their daughter and making a positive impact on the Meridian community. Um, so Sean family board, um, on behalf of the parks and recreation department, I want to thank you for what you've done. Um, it's going to bless Meridian kids for generations to come. So, thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you so much just for being willing to make Eva's dream a reality and showing us what we needed to do to be able to get that done and being willing to take a chance and work with an organization that had a lofty goal of making a park of that magnitude. And so without the help of you guys, our community, our friends and our board it wouldn't be possible and you know I've got to share Eva's story twice today with a guy at a coffee shop and the swim lesson instructor today and you know I think just having the park is just an awesome, easy way to just kind of start that conversation with people and a reminder, um, that life is short and, and that we, um, we need to embrace all that we have now. And, um, and we, since, uh, Dave Kuntz, he was passing we're in the middle of an international adoption, and so we now have two new plumbers here as of November, so this is dawn and happy and so and we got to go to the park this weekend, and it was a beautiful day, so thank you guys. Thank you Sean.

Steve, just want to say on behalf of the council and myself, you know, it's a great to be able to pass this along to the family. And Steve, thank you for making those efforts to extend that recognition to, I don't want to say where it belongs, but where it's deserved. So thank you. And with that, we'll move on to item 14, which is Street Japan follow-up discussion. Turn this over to Kendall.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of council, along with community members. So I'm here just to do a quick status update on the 2026-2030 strategic plan. Kind of a short recap. We worked with Lee Scott with Unleashing Leaders, who led this collaborative process with City Council, the mayor, and directors through the different departments in the city. And through that process, you established and approved focus areas and goals. The focus areas were very similar to what was in our last plan. It was agreed that those are still the focus areas and represent the work of the city. There were some minor insignificant changes to a few small words there, but otherwise those carried forward. And then goals were established for each of those focus areas, three to four goals each. And those focus areas are responsible growth, transportation and infrastructure, business and economic vitality, public health and safety, a vibrant and sustainable community, and government excellence. The next step in that, since we've last presented to you, was to establish tactics for those goals. And department directors have been working with their staff to determine what those tactics are going to look like. And a complete list of those tactics was included in the tactic report that was provided to you last week. And so i'm here, along with directors available to answer any questions that you might have on the latest update to that collaborative process. And as we look ahead we'll continue to encourage liaisons to meet with the departments that they work with, as we start to work through and implement those tactics. I stand for any questions.

Thank you. And if I could add to that, Council, hopefully they were also shared with their liaisons that these were not, it's not the first time a liaison would have been seeing these tactics to provide any feedback or guidance or questions through that process. So if you think they're way out of whack, you can start by talking to the liaison and asking the important questions of how did you let that tactic get into there. But staff is here to answer any questions you may have. Otherwise, just know that we will begin, even though we've been working on them, now that they've been all put together they've been put into the the database that we can help track and we'll continue to start working through these items as best as we can and we have the resources to do so so council with that any questions for either kendall myself or the team that's here from the departments mr mayor that's i'm straighter

So what kind of follow up could we expect to see citywide tactics at a certain point in time? Like, I didn't see an attachment for this meeting. So what, what is the follow up?

So with the strategic performance analyst position being unfilled this time, we're going to continue to watch as tactics are progressed with implementation. And we have yet to determine exactly what that's going to look like. If you have requests, please let us know. But with that position being unfilled at this time, we don't know exactly what that's going to look like.

They should have received the list of all the tactics. It came via email. So that's what I would encourage. You may not have seen them through email.

Yeah, I sent them out last week to everybody.

But we take a look there if we have any questions we can obviously do follow-up conversations and these aren't things that are approved by council But they were to inform what we're working on and if there's any questions or feedback where we're happy to provide those moving forward Okay Ready for now. Well, if there's a if there's a lot more than we need come back to we can come back and have another conversation about these Okay, thank you. Thanks Kendall with that we'll move on to item 15 which is the 2026 interag cooperative cooperative agreement for extra duty officer assignments between 80 county highway districts in the city of meridian chief pastor to share thank you mayor members of the council

This agreement is an agreement that was proposed to us by the Ada County Highway District with the upcoming construction season, especially with the chip ceiling that is going on. And what they've requested is that on Meridian projects, they would like to open up extra patrol opportunities for officers, which would be overtime opportunities, would not be the part of the regular shifts. to patrol those construction zones, those chip ceiling areas to help cut down on the speed and the violations of laws and the safety for those workers from the highway district that are working those areas. That would be reimbursed by Ada County Highway District to the city.

Okay. Thank you, Chief. Council, any questions? That's one of the little robbers.

Mr. Mayor, do we need a motion on this, or do we wait for, okay. Well, if there's no other comments, I would like to move that we approve the 2026 Interagency Cooperative Agreement for Extra Duty Office Assignment between Ada County Highway District and the City of Meridian.

HAVE A MOTION AND A SECOND. IS THERE DISCUSSION ON THE MOTION TO APPROVE THE AGREEMENT?

MR. MAYOR.

COUNCILMAN KAVANAUGH.

QUICK, AND CHIEF, THANKS FOR BRINGING THIS, AND MR. MAYOR, MAYBE CANDIDATE CHIEF, JUST PASS ALONG OUR APPRECIATION TO THE HIGHWAY DISTRICT FOR BEING PUBLIC SAFETY FOCUSED. I THINK SOMETIMES We don't always quite understand the thought process that the highway district puts into decisions. That sometimes lends to us being maybe more critical because we don't have all the knowledge. I think this is a good opportunity to commend them for thinking about public safety in the county as a part of a big overall project. So thanks for bringing this. I'm fully in support.

Chief, there's a button on your computer screen.

On the computer, there should be a green light. The red light is now green.

Mayor, Council Member Kavner, I agree. We actually, over the last probably year and a half, have really improved our relationships with ACHD. I think overall as a city, but certainly we're noticing it as a police department for sure. Cool.

Are there further comments on the motion? If not, all in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed nay. The ayes have it. And the agreement is agreed to. Look forward to those chip selling taking place in Meridian this summer. And maybe people think it's actually Meridian doing it, not ACHD. We'll see. So with that, we're at the end of our meeting. Do I have a motion to adjourn? Mr. Mayor. Councilman Orton. So moved. We adjourn.

Second.

Motion to second to adjourn. All in favor say goodbye by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed nay. The ayes have it. We are adjourned.

That's what I thought.

Well, Adrian's seven, so. Well, we're in sync on that. We usually get done early, so. Good.

Thanks.